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ENGAGING FAMILIES OF SUICIDAL YOUTH
CharlesEtta T. Sutton, MSW, BCD
University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
University Behavioral Healthcare-Office of Prevention Services
Brookwood Plaza II, 45 Knightsbridge Road
Piscataway, New Jersey 08854
1-800-762-2889
The family is the most basic social unit providing nurturance and emotional support to its
members. Like all groups, families have their own organization and internal sets of rules that
govern and regulate functioning. Part of these rules involves assigning different roles to individual
family members. Sometimes the suicidal adolescent's behavior has something to do with his or
her role in the family.
Families are complex, each differing over time in their capacity for and means of supporting the
growth and development of individual family members. Families are often confused by their
teens, who one moment are provocative, testing the limits of authority, and in the next minute,
childish and dependent, looking for the security of home base.
Most families regardless of their ethnic background, are inclined to work out problems
themselves, and to seek advice from within their kinship or informal network, such as friends
andneighbors. When working with families, it is very important to appreciate the process a family
undergoes when being told their child is suicidal. It is difficult to work- with families who
rejectoutside assistance. Families need to be guided in ways that minimize denial of the suicide
potential of their child. It is important to examine the factors underlying families' resistance to
help. For some families, suicidal ideation or the suicidal act is a signal of family dysfunction.
Although. family resistance is often a function of a number of factors, an underlying sense of guilt
seems to be the common emotion that families guard and defend against.
If behavioral health professionals' can alleviate feelings of guilt even when they are not verbalized,
there will be more leverage with which to engage a family's cooperation in following through with
whatever intervention is deemed necessary. It is important to understand that family resistance
may be derived from three sources: the family, the helping professional, and the helping system.
The key to working with resistant families is to continually look for opportunities to connect with
the family. The more connected and trusting the family feels toward the behavioral health
professional the more leverage there is to mobilize the family for action.