Firestone Suicide

“In the United States, suicide is the 11th leading cause of death, with an average of one person dying from suicide every 15.2 minutes, and one person attempting suicide every thirty eight seconds.” (Firestone, Page 1) Suicidal ideation consists and recurring thought and attempts of committing suicide. Throughout the years, therapists have studied suicide and they have learned that they, as human beings are not able to prevent all suicides, but they are able to help and try to lessen the number of suicides. The therapists themselves, have to learn all the different techniques to help treat the suicidal individual. But the therapist has to know that the suicidal person is in control of their own being. As the website, “Suicide: What therapists

One part of them wants to live and is goal-directed and life-affirming, while the other part is self-critical, self hating and ultimately self destructive” (Firestone, Page 1-2). Robert Firestone has came up with a Theory that involves the “real self” and the “anti self”. He has came up with, the real self represents the side of the individual that wants to live and is life-affirming while the anti self the destructive thoughts and destructive side of the individual. Negative thoughts exist in the suicidal mind, which drives the said individual to self criticism and self hatred. When self hatred comes into play, individuals usually give up, and don’t want to live through hating themselves. The negatives thoughts soon drives the person to acts of suicide. (Firestone, Page

The skill building component of Dialectical Behavior Therapy is that it targets the issues that involves distress tolerance and the development of healthy affect regulation strategies, which are both very common when it comes down to the suicidal person. In other words, coming from What is DBT?, “Dialectical Behavior Therapy is a cognitive behavioral treatment that was originally developed to treat chronically suicidal individuals diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and it is now recognized as the gold standard psychological treatment for this population” (What is DBT). Dialectical Behavior Therapy has helped tremendously throughout the world with different individuals. “A controlled trial conducted in an inpatient setting by Bohus et al. (2004) found people in therapy who received three months of DBT improved at a greater rate than those who received treatment as usual” (Dialectical