Course Brief
“If it doesn’t matter to people around me that I’m not around tomorrow onwards, then I might as well end it all for me and actually not be around.”
How do Counsellors or related persons deal with this? Many people In Singapore are perplexed. How do we handle this and get into clients narratives or story-making and say suicide is not an option to consider. Suicide, deep down, is a moral issue and entanglement or messed up lives require our time and understanding.
The digital economy drives an already high paced society even faster. If you can’t cope, how do you then manage? “The world’s gone crazy, I’m getting off.” A sad indictment and it happens more often nowadays, pulling in the young too. Come join David Newman who has vast experience in this area and learn...
Course Outline
• Suicide ideation
• What makes people take their own lives?
• Understanding suicide
• Narrative approaches
• Identity
• What has become de-stabilising?
• Case-studies
This workshop will also explore an approach to working with suicidal experience that:
• de-centres the worker and assessment, rather than centres workers safety strategies and risk assessment,
• emphasises the know-how and expertise from those who have suicidal experience via:
◦ rich and varied feedback on what is preferred in conversations and in service delivery, and
◦ collective documents of life saving know-how, and
these links will offer more of a sense of the work that will be shared:
https://dulwichcentre.com.au/responding- to-suicidal-thoughts/
https://dulwichcentre.com.au/holding-our-heads-up/
About Your Speaker
David Newman works in independent practice at Sydney Narrative Therapy, is an honorary clinical fellow at Melbourne University School of Social work and is a member of the Dulwich Centre teaching faculty. Recent teaching assignments have included Brazil, Nepal, Turkey, Hong Kong and Palestine. David has just finished up working part time in a psychiatric unit for young people. David is passionate about effective and respectful ways of working with people around mental health and suicidal experience. He is the author of “How we deal with ‘way out thoughts’: A living document of ways of talking with young people about suicidal thoughts” (2016, Dulwich Centre Publications) and co-author with Marnie Sather of “’Being More Than Just Your Final Act': Elevating the Multiple Storylines of Suicide with Narrative Practice" in the book Critical Suicidology (2015, UW Press) and of the resource “Holding our heads up: sharing stories not stigma when a loved one has suicided” (2016, Dulwich Centre Publications). It is possible to find out more about David’s work by watching this presentation: https://dulwichcentre.com.au/assisting-young-people-to-find-their-language-through-the-language-of-others-knowledge-from-an-inpatient-ward-by-david-newman/