Self-Destructive Behavior

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The key to understanding suicide and self-destructive behavior comes from the awareness of how some destructive thought processes control the need to end one’s life. Being cognizant of how these thoughts are veiled and can lead to a self-destructive downward spiral, enables clinicians to better assess risk and design interventions for depressed and suicidal clients. According to Nock and Banajii (2007) worldwide, suicides among adolescents have increased dramatically averaging one million each year. Many teenagers experience strong feelings of stress, confusion and self-doubt in the process of growing up. Pressures to succeed, the economy, and the environment can intensify these feelings. At present, self-report has been unsuccessful in the prevention of teen suicide; the tools available to help health care professionals detect potential suicide ideation are not sufficiently reliable (Nock & Banajii, 2007). In fact, Nock and Benajii stated that often during therapy, suicidal ideation may not be present and surfaces once the patient goes home or oftentimes, the patient will deliberately hide the urge to end his life. Because the existing tools rely solely on subjective statements, it is very challenging to decipher congruency between what is verbalized and what remains unsaid (Nock & Banajii, 2007).

Hypothesis

In their article, Nock and Banajii (2007) utilize three hypotheses to evaluate their newly developed tool, built upon the already existing Implicit Association Test (IAT) to help detect potential teen suicidal ideation. This tool is called Suicidal Ideation- Implicit Association Test (SI-IAT). The first hypothesis identified sates that it “would provide the first evidence of a performance-based measure that can disti...

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...such as firearms could be utilized in conjunction with knives because some participants did not correlate the word cutting, for example, with suicidal ideation.

Benefits definitely outweighed any harm and if this tool is perfected, it could actually become the most reliable of all existing ones utilized by mental health providers today. Policy and practice could change because this test could be implemented to every adolescent regardless of age or mental health status in the schools and at well-child visits through their providers. If this were the case, many adolescents could be screened and suicide among adolescents could significantly decrease.

Works Cited

Nock, M. K. and Banaji, M. R. (2007). Prediction of suicide ideation and attempts among

adolescents using a brief performance-based test. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 75(5), 707-715.

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