Alternatives to Suicide : Beyond Risk and Toward a Life Worth Living

Alternatives to Suicide: Beyond Risk and Toward a Life Worth Living demonstrates how fostering resilience and a desire for life can broaden and advance an understanding of suicide. The book summarizes the existing literature and outlines a new focus on the dynamic interplay of risk and resilience that leads to a life-focus approach to suicide prevention. It calls for a treatment approach that enhances the opportunity to collaboratively engage clients in discussion about their lives. Providing a new perspective on how to approach suicide prevention, the book also lays out key theories on resilience and the interplay of risk and protective factors.

Finally, the book outlines how emerging technologies and advances in data-analytic sophistication using real-time monitoring of suicide dynamics are ushering the field of suicide research and prevention into a new and exciting era.

• Focuses on what attenuates the transition from thinking about suicide to attempting it
• Calls for a life-focus treatment approach as opposed to risk-aversion intervention techniques
• Demonstrates how fostering resilience can advance our understanding of pathways to suicide
• Discusses emerging technologies being used in current suicide research and prevention
• Outlines the differences between risk factors and risk correlates
• Covers real-time assessment of dynamic suicide risk

Professor, Associate Dean (Research), School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia and on the steering committee of the Young Lives Matter Foundation. Dr. Page has worked as a clinical psychologist in the Clinical Unit for Anxiety and Depression and was co-director of the Robin Winkler Clinic where he was instrumental in developing the clinic’s individual and group treatment programs as a model of science-informed practice. He is a past National President of the Australian Association for Cognitive and Behavior Therapy and the inaugural winner of the Tracy Goodall Early Career Award in recognition of innovation in research. He is currently Associate Editor with Psychotherapy Research and has published over 100 research papers, books, and book chapters. His books include “Clinical Psychology for Trainees”, and he has been awarded teaching fellowships for his work in the training of clinical psychologists and developing training opportunities in rural and remote settings.

Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia. Author of three books and over 40 papers and book chapters, Dr. Stritzke has also presented at dozens of conferences including the 10th European Congress of Psychology and the Australian Psychological Society. His research interests cover a wide array of topics such as suicidology, self-stigma in mental illness, and substance abuse.