SciELO - Scientific Electronic Library Online

 
vol.11 issue1Teachers building dwelling thinking with slidewareLiving and learning as responsive authoring: Reflections on the feminist critiques of Merleau-Ponty's anonymous body author indexsubject indexarticles search
Home Pagealphabetic serial listing  

Services on Demand

Article

Indicators

Related links

  • On index processCited by Google
  • On index processSimilars in Google

Share


Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology

On-line version ISSN 1445-7377
Print version ISSN 2079-7222

Indo-Pac. j. phenomenol. (Online) vol.11 n.1 Grahamstown May. 2011

http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/ipjp.2011.11.1.4.1103 

Therapists' experience of working with suicidal clients

 

 

Gabriel Rossouw; Elizabeth Smythe; Peter Greener

 

 


ABSTRACT

This paper is based on a study of therapists' experiences of working with suicidal clients. Using a hermeneutic-phenomenological methodology informed by Heidegger, the study provides an understanding of the meaning of therapists' experiences from their perspective as mental health professionals in New Zealand. In this regard, the findings of the study identified three themes: Therapists' reaction of shock upon learning of the suicide of their client; Therapists' experience of assessing suicidal clients as a burden; and finally, Therapists' professional and personal crises as a result of their experiences and struggling to come to terms with events.
The study sheds light on how the experiences of therapists whose clients have committed suicide can be understood. The findings show how mainstream prevention and intervention strategies result from the misrepresentation and misinterpretation of our traditional way of knowing what it means to be human. When therapists discover that phenomena are not necessarily what they appear to be, they feel unsettled and confused about their responsibilities and what it means to live and die as a human being. The study reveals that therapists experience a profound legacy of guilt, doubt and fear when a client commits suicide. Finally, the study proposes that the time has come for the profession to care for its own in order to allow therapist, in turn to care for (and about) the vulnerable other.


 

 

“Full text available only in PDF format”

 

 

References

Beautrais, A. L. (2000a). Methods of youth suicide in New Zealand: Trends and implications for prevention. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 34(3), 413-419.         [ Links ]

Beautrais, A. L. (2000b). Risk factors for suicide and attempted suicide among young people. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 34, 420-436.         [ Links ]

Beautrais, A. L. (2001). Suicides and serious suicide attempts: Two populations or one? Psychological Medicine, 31, 837-845.         [ Links ]

Beautrais, A. L., Collings, S. C. D., Ehrhardt, P., & Ehrhardt, K. (2005). Suicide Prevention: A review of evidence of risk and protective factors, and points of effective intervention. Ministry of Health, New Zealand. Retrieved 26 May 2006, from http://www.moh.govt.nz        [ Links ]

Beautrais, A. L., Horwood, L. J., & Fergusson, D. M. (2004). Knowledge and attitudes about suicide in 25-year-olds. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 38(4), 260-265.         [ Links ]

Beautrais, A. L., Joyce, P. R., & Mulder, R. T. (1998a). Psychiatric contacts among youths aged 13 through 24 years who have made serious suicide attempts. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 37, 504-511. Retrieved 18 September 2006 from http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz        [ Links ]

Beautrais, A. L., Joyce, P. R., & Mulder, R. T. (1998b). Youth suicide attempts: A social and demographic profile. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 32, 349-357.         [ Links ]

Bradfield, B. (2007). Examining the lived world: The place of phenomenology in psychiatry and clinical psychology. The Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 7(1) Retrieved 14 June 2009, from www.ipjp.org        [ Links ]

Caelli, K. (2001). Engaging with phenomenology: Is it more of a challenge than it needs to be? Qualitative Health Research, 11(2), 273-281.         [ Links ]

Camus, A. (2005). The myth of Sisyphus (J. O'Brien, Trans.). London: Penguin Books.         [ Links ]

Conroy, S. A. (2003). A pathway for interpretive phenomenology. International Journal of Quantitative Methods, 2(3). Article 4. Retrieved 3 March 2005, from http://www.alberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/2_3final/pdf/conroy.pdf        [ Links ]

Crowe, B. D. (2006). Heidegger's religious origins; destruction and authenticity. Indianapolis: Indianapolis University Press.         [ Links ]

Cutcliffe, J. R., Joyce, A., & Cummins, M. (2004). Building a case for understanding the lived experiences of males who attempt suicide in Alberta, Canada. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 11(3), 305-312.         [ Links ]

Dreyfus, H. L. (1991). Being-in-the-world: A commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.         [ Links ]

Evans, I. M., & Fitzgerald, J. (2007). Integrating research and practice in professional psychology: Models and paradigms. In I. M. Evans, J. J. Rucklidge, & M. O'Driscoll (Eds.), Professional practice of psychology in Aotearoa New Zealand (pp. 283-300). Wellington: The New Zealand Psychological Society.         [ Links ]

Fortune, S., & Clarkson, H. (2006). The role of child and adolescent mental health services in suicide prevention in New Zealand. Australasian Psychiatry, 14(4), 369-373.         [ Links ]

Fortune, S., Seymour, F., & Lambie, I. (2005). Suicide behaviour in a clinical sample of children and adolescents in New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 34(3), 164-170.         [ Links ]

Giorgi, A., & Giorgi, B. (2003). Phenomenology. In J. A. Smith (Ed.), Qualitative Psychology: A Practical Guide to Research Methods (pp. 26-52). London: Sage.         [ Links ]

Gould, M., Greenberg, T., Velting, D., & Shaffer, D. (2003). Youth suicide risk and preventive interventions: A review of the past 10 years. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 42(4), 386-405.         [ Links ]

Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans. First English ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.         [ Links ]

Hillman, J. (1992). Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: Harper Perennial.         [ Links ]

Holroyd, A. E. (2007). Interpretive hermeneutic phenomenology: Clarifying understanding. The Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 7(2). Retrieved 17 June 2009, from www.ipjp.org        [ Links ]

Howard, F. (2008). Managing stress or enhancing wellbeing? Positive psychology's contributions to clinical supervision. Australian Psychologist, 43(2), 105-113.         [ Links ]

Kazantzis, N., Calvert, S. J., Orlinsky, D. E., Merrick, P. L., & Ronan, K. R. (2009). Perceived professional development in psychological therapies: Comparing New Zealand, Canadian, and USA psychologists. The Bulletin, 112, 36-47.         [ Links ]

Loewenthal, D., & Snell, R. (2003). Post-modernism for psychotherapists: A critical reader. London: Routledge.         [ Links ]

Ministry of Health. (2004). Suicide Facts: Provisional 2001 Statistics (all ages). Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Health.         [ Links ]

Peperzac, A. T. (1993). To the other: An introduction to the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Indiana: Purdue University Press, West Lafayette.         [ Links ]

Smith, J. A., & Osborn, M. (2003). Interpretative phenomenological analysis. In J. A. Smith (Ed.), Qualitative Psychology: A Practical Guide to Research Methods (pp. 53-80). London: Sage.         [ Links ]

Smythe, E. A., Ironside, P. M., Sims, S. L., Swenson, M. M., & Spence, D. G. (2008). Doing Heideggerian hermeneutic research: A discussion paper. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 45(9), 1389-1397.         [ Links ]

Smythe, E. A., MacCulloch, T., & Charmley, R. (2009). Professional supervision: trusting the wisdom that 'comes'. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 37(1), 17-25.         [ Links ]

Sutton, D. (2008). Exploring the meaning of doing for people recovering from mental illness. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand.         [ Links ]

Szasz, T. S. (1965). The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.         [ Links ]

The Dominion Post. (2006, June 7). 'Hush-Hush' suicide reporting doesn't work. Retrieved 7 June, 2006, from http://www.stuff.co.nz/print/0,1478,3692097/all,00.html        [ Links ]

Van Manen, M. (1990). Researching Lived Experience. Ontario: Althouse Press.         [ Links ]

Willig, C. (2001). Introducing qualitative research in psychology: Adventures in theory and method. Buckingham: Open University Press.         [ Links ]

Wrathall, M. A. (2005). How to read Heidegger. London: Granta Books.         [ Links ]

 

 

Creative Commons License All the contents of this journal, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License