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The Impact Of Client Suicide On Mental Health Workers

Ellen 1. Anderson

Children's Resource Center

1045 Klotz Road

Bowling Green, Ohio 43402

419-352-7588

Mental health professionals run a substantial risk of losing a client to suicide. In spite of extensive research documenting the extremely negative impact of suicide on friends and family members of suicide completers, very little research has examined the personal and professional impact of the loss of a client to suicide on mental health professionals.

For therapists and other mental health professionals, the impact of client suicide is both personal and professional, because the work we do involves a close relationship with clients and patients. The tool we use in working with clients is in part our personality, our way of interacting with others. Our very sense of self, our personhood, may be called into question when a client completes suicide. Yet there is very little support in the profession for the emotional and professional difficulties such a loss can raise.

Drawing on a qualitative study made with mental health professionals who have experienced the loss of a client to suicide, this presentation will cover a number of issues:

•General emotional impact of suicide for survivors

•Emotional impact on mental health professionals

•Professional impact on mental health professionals

•Issues of supervisory response, coworker response, and administrative support

•Coping strategies that have helped mental health professionals through this difficult time

•Exploration of the model of grief work that feeds a therapeutic culture of denial, as well as a newer, clinically based grief work model

•A discussion of the therapeutic culture that results in denial of feelings for mental health professionals

•Suggestions for changes, both to therapeutic culture and the organizations in which we work.