Brief Cognitive Behavior Therapy – BCBT

 Individual therapy formats that now range from 10 to 12 sessions on average.

Twelve youths were randomly assigned to participate in BCBT and 12 were randomly assigned to participate in status quo treatment, and then followed for one year. At the end of the year, none of the youths who received BCBT had made a suicide attempt as compared to three of the youths who received status quo treatment.

Crisis response plan (CRP) as a stand-alone intervention for reducing the short-term risk of suicidal behaviors. The CRP is a procedure contained within BCBT that helps suicidal patients to remember how to respond effectively to stressful situations instead of attempting suicide. The CRP contains several key components: (1) recognizing one’s personal “warning signs” for an emotional crisis, (2) using simple strategies to reduce one’s stress or to distract oneself from the situation, (3) thinking about reasons for living, (4) reaching out to friends, family members, or other sources of social support to reduce one’s stress or to distract oneself from the situation, and (5) accessing professional support or crisis services.

Going back to our automobile metaphor, the contract for safety encourages suicidal people not to crash their car when speeding toward a brick wall, whereas the CRP teaches them where the brakes are located and how to use them.

At the end of the study, only 5% of those who received a CRP attempted suicide as compared to 19% who received the status quo treatment—a 76% reduction in suicide attempts.

A central assumption of these interventions is that adversity is simply a part of living and negative emotions can be natural and useful responses to unexpected, uncontrollable, and unfortunate life events. 

If all of these adults who received mental health treatment were to receive BCBT instead of status quo mental health treatment, Bernecker’s results suggest that somewhere between 7,000 and 10,500 suicide deaths may be prevented, an amount that would reduce the national suicide rate by approximately 15% to 22%.

We quickly identified a trend among those who had received BCBT: These patients were reporting improvements in all sorts of symptoms of mental illness, such as depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and sleep problems, but this wasn’t what they found to be most helpful about the treatment. Over and over again, patients were telling us the treatment was most helpful because it improved “good” things, such as happiness, hope, purpose, and self-efficacy. They were more hopeful about life, believed that things were going to be OK after all, and had a sense of purpose. When bad things happened in life, they also felt like they knew how to respond more effectively