306 – Recognising Suicide Risk in Therapy Clients

Unmasking Neurodivergence and Ethnicity Using Digital Tools – Giving Feedback to Your Tutors

In Episode 306 of the Counselling Tutor Podcast, your hosts Rory Lees-Oakes and Ken Kelly take us through this week’s three topics:

• Firstly in ‘Ethical, Sustainable Practice’, we look at recognising suicide risk in your therapy clients.
• Then in ‘Practice Matters’, Rory speaks with Lesley Simpson-Gray about unmasking neurodivergence and ethnicity using digital tools.
• And lastly in ‘Student Services’, Rory and Ken talk about how to give feedback to your tutors.

Recognising Suicide Risk in Therapy Clients [starts at 03:41 mins]

Supporting a client who is at risk of taking their own life can be very challenging as a counsellor. In this section, Rory and Ken discuss some ways of recognising if your client is high risk, and the steps you can take to prepare for this:

• It’s time to make a shift away from prediction-based risk assessment and towards an emphasis on therapeutic engagement.
• We should be aiming to engage with these clients who may be thinking of taking their own life and working on it within the therapeutic relationship.
• This is a subject that requires continuous CPD.
• Risk assessments can be very useful – but they’re not foolproof.
• To recognise suicide risk in your therapy clients, you need to be thinking about the dynamic nature of a client and how this might present.
• Detecting suicidality requires holistic evaluation, detailed enquiry, and checking context.
• This is a subject with a lot of personalisation – it could present itself differently in different clients.
• Neurodivergent clients could be at a higher risk.
• Do you need to break confidentiality? Can you take a collaborative approach with an involvement of support systems around the individual?
• To help yourself recognise suicide risk in your therapy clients, make sure you’re doing the training around this subject.

Unmasking Neurodivergence and Ethnicity Using Digital Tools [starts at 19:09 mins]

In this week’s ‘Practice Matters’, Rory speaks with Lesley Simpson-Gray about unmasking neurodivergence and ethnicity using digital tools such as video games.

The main points of this discussion include:

• There are so many layers to identity.
• People have different ethnic experiences and that shape their perception of the world.
• This can also change how mental health is viewed.
• Neurodivergence is yet another layer to identity – some difference may be seen as threatening to those less accepting.
• Learning difficulties can often be dismissed as behavioural issues.
• Video games can be used as a way for the autistic community to practice social skills and have a space that sometimes feels safer than the real world in terms of social relationships.
• Finding characters they can relate to, and gaining power through that.
• Allowing them to be themselves in a way that helps people to see it and accept them.
• Tools for communication and figuring out identity.
• A co-created environment to allow the client to feel comfortable and invite you into that space.

Giving Feedback to Your Tutors [starts at 44:04 mins]

It’s common to receive feedback from your tutor, but sometimes you get the opportunity to give them feedback – and you should use it! In this section, Rory and Ken discuss how to give helpful feedback, particularly to your tutor:

• Giving honest feedback can require us to have courage and be congruent.
• Feedback should never be given with the intention to hurt someone – it should be aiming to help.
• There can be an element of power imbalance in tutor-student relationships, but giving feedback can help to rebalance this slightly.
• Useful feedback offers suggestions for improvement.
• Try to think of a positive, then state what your challenge/struggle was, and then say what could have made that better for you – what works, what doesn’t, how can that improve?

Links and Resources

• Lesley Simpson-Gray
• Counselling Skills Academy
• Advanced Certificate in Counselling Supervision
• Basic Counselling Skills: A Student Guide
• Counsellor CPD
• Counselling Study Resource
• Counselling Theory in Practice: A Student Guide
• Counselling Tutor Shop
• Facebook group
• Website
• Online and Telephone Counselling: A Practitioner’s Guide
• Online and Telephone Counselling Course