A new research published in the journal Lancet Psychiatry by authors from John Hopkins University revealed that suicide talk therapy and psychotherapy have helped in reducing the rates of suicide attempts among high-risk people by as much as 26 percent compared to those who never received any form of therapy.
According to the researchers, even short-term therapy can pose many benefits to those who belong in the high risk group for suicide. As a matter of fact, they followed 65,000 Danish people who once attempted suicide for two decades or 20 years from 1992 through 2010. The Danish government opened special suicide prevention centers in the country where they offer assistance and services to their constituents. From the population, they got a sample of 5,600 people and they received psychological counseling compared to the others who did not receive any therapy session.
The study participants have volunteered to join six to ten talking therapy sessions at the suicide prevention clinics. They were followed for 20 years and the findings revealed that those who have joined talk therapies have lesser risk for suicide attempts. The study states, "Our findings show a lower risk of repeated deliberate self-harm and general mortality in recipients of psychosocial therapy after short-term and long-term follow-up, and a protective effect for suicide after long-term follow-up, which favor the use of psychosocial therapy interventions after deliberate self-harm."
Furthermore, author Annette Erlangsen, an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health reiterated, "We know that people who have attempted suicide are a high-risk population and that we need to help them. However, we did not know what would be effective in terms of treatment. Now we have evidence that psychosocial treatment - which provides support, not medication - is able to prevent suicide in a group at high risk of dying by suicide."
This study is not the first when it comes to intervening with mental issues and it has proven that talk therapy is indeed effective in alleviating anxiety and other mental problems. Psycotherapy is crucial in providing assistance to patient experiencing mental issues. Therapeutic communication is the key to establishing a two-way relationship between the counselor and the patient.
