Psychotherapy Reduces Suicide Attempts, New Study Confirms

A meta-analysis finds similar levels of effectiveness across both direct and indirect interventions for reducing suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and self-harm.

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Direct and indirect psychotherapeutic interventions are equally effective in reducing suicidal ideation (SI) and suicide attempts (SA). A new meta-analysis, published in JAMA Psychiatry, compares both direct and indirect interventions in their effect on SI, SA, and self-harm. The authors suggest that given their similar level of impact, indirect intervention could be used as a way to reach a broader group of individuals struggling with mental health issues who may not otherwise seek treatment specifically for suicidal thoughts or self-harm.

The research team consisted of an international group of individuals at universities spanning across the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy. It was led by Wouter van Ballegooijen, of Amsterdam University Medical Center, and included prominent researchers Ioana Cristea and Pim Cuijpers.

They write, “This systematic review and meta-analysis found that psychosocial interventions were associated with significant reductions in the severity of suicidal ideation and the incidence of suicide attempts. The observed results were similar for direct interventions—that is, those specifically targeting suicidal ideation or suicide attempts—and for indirect interventions targeting other mental health problems.”

male psychologist listening to woman and making notes in document on clipboard

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8 COMMENTS

  1. The BIG PROBLEM here, is that “JAMA Psychiatry” still promotes the now-discredited fraudulent pseudoscience of “psychiatry”, which is only 21st Century Phrenology, with potent neuro-toxins, as everybody intelligent and un-brainwashed knows by now….
    As an example of the linguistic flim-flam employed by these charlatans, look at the deceptive acronyms used here. The acronymic neologisms “SI”, and “SA” are here used to stand for “suicidal ideation”, and “suicide(al) attempts”. BUT, in most Criminal Court, Family Court proceedings, “SA” is used as the acronym for “sexual assault”. A sexual assault, and a suicide attempt, could hardly be MORE different. Yet, the same clinicians use the same acronym, for 2 completely different acts! How can this NOT breed confusion and obfuscation?….
    A second major bone of contention gets unearthed by the slippery nature of any “meta-analysis”. This simply means that no original research has been done. A broad array of published papers are reviewed, and data collected. But there’s no humanity here. Simply words on a page, or digital blips on a screen. That’s ALL this is. Conceptual. Subjective. Very open to interpretation, and even translation errors as the data is translated from language to language. And, nowhere is there the individual human touch. No names of individual therapists & individual patients, to whom one could return, for further clarification or confirmation of facts. So how can we REALLY TRUST this “big data”. We can’t. But we must.
    But must we? The fraudulent pseudoscience of psychiatry says that we must trust it. But I don’t trust Phrenology, either!….

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    • In past centuries, suicide was a religious and philosophical issue. With the advent of psychiatry it became associated with medical illness, although the supposed close connection of suicidal ideation and behavior with real brain pathology is a tenuous hypothesis based on modern western norms.
      Were the many thousands of Japanese soldiers and pilots who died in suicidal banzai charges and kamikaze attacks all suffering from clinical disorders? Are the Jain holy men who starve themselves to death in order to escape the eternal cycle of reincarnation delusional schizoids? To me, the appropriateness of such behaviors is best understood in a specific cultural context, not in terms of metaphorical health and sickness.

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  2. misleading headline considering the weakness of the results not to mention the vast confounding variables in anything like this.

    A few years ago this was published https://www.bps.org.uk/2017/01/23/after-half-a-century-of-research-psychology-cant-predict-suicidal-behaviours-better-than-by-coin-flip.

    It seems we can spin research in anyway so desired. What about the harms of psychotherapy and the people it can tip over into suicide? – one thing you read over and over again are sentences like ‘the harms of psychotherapy are well known but under researched’

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    • One of my best friends is Court-ordered to subject herself to the abuse, bullying, and gaslighting typical of the local “Community Mental Health Center”, Monadnock Family Services, where her primary tormentor, a fraudulent pseudoscience psychiatrist, Melinda Asbury, is slowly killing my friend with Zyprexa and Limotrigine, and negligent gaslighting and verbal and psychological abuse from case worker staff, including Maddie Noyes. CEO Phil Wyzik is too useless to intervene, despite my friend & I meeting him in his office several times over the years, in an attempt to save her life from MFS’s malfeasant malpractice…. May God have mercy on us all…. She’s not at all suicidal, but MFS bullying causes her to consider….

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  3. Most of this blog came across as psychobabble to me, initially, until I went to the cited definitions of “direct interventions” / “suicide-focused” vs. “indirect interventions” / “other (indirect) psychotherapies on suicidal ideation and suicide attempts.”

    First of all, I will say the psychological and psychiatric industries are obsessed with suicide, from my experience. I wasn’t remotely suicidal when I went to my former psychologist, I just wanted to know the etiology of my antidepressant withdrawal induced brain zaps.

    But the psychologists are not medically trained doctors, so they should never be recommended as a doctor, to someone who has a real life physical symptom of antidepressant withdrawal. But that was way back in 2001, and none of the psychiatrists or psychologists even knew antidepressant discontinuation syndrome caused brain zaps, until 2005.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247806326_'Brain_shivers'_From_chat_room_to_clinic

    Isn’t the ignorance based arrogance and hubris appalling?

    Maybe we shouldn’t give any industries the right to play judge, jury, and executioner, to innocent others, for any ethical or unethical reasons they please? Maybe that’s the opposite of living in a just and law based society?

    But I’m curious when you say, “Psychotherapy Reduces Suicide Attempts.” Is that compared to compassionate, actual care … or is psychotherapy only better than psychology’s partner, psychiatry’s “care,” which is one of forced chemical gang rapes, and neurotoxic poisonings?

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  4. There’s a HUGE, HUGE problem here….sure, you can take a bunch of vaguely “suicidal” folks, and “work” on them with various forms of “psychotherapy”….BUT HOW do you know what actual effect that “psychotherapy” has, versus the simple socializing effects of human contact & interaction?….

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    • Psychology and psychiatry have entered into faustian deals with both the paternalistic mainstream religions and our government. But I do believe God knows this, and those Pharmakia forcing industries will be judged fairly by God. Let’s hope and pray for the fair judgement by God, of all those within the Holy Spirit blaspheming, psychological and psychiatric industries.

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