Managing Suicide Risk amongst Adolescents: The Role of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)

Suicide is a complex, multidimensional and multi-determined, preventable act that has been studied from philosophical, sociological, psychological and clinical perspective. Well stated by Louw&Louw, 2007 that adolescence today is unfortunately not only a period of preparation for and transformation to adulthood but under the present era of globalization it has become a period in which adolescents increasingly face many new challenges which they are often ill-prepared for. Adolescent suicidal behaviour varies across the studies and countries due to differences in population characteristics. Dialectical behaviour therapy under different adapted forms has proved its efficacy in treating the individuals with self-harm behaviour including self-cutting, suicidal thoughts, urges to suicide, para suicide and suicidal attempts also. The primary objective of the present research study was to observe the effect of adapted form of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) in managing the suicide risk amongst adolescents. In the present study authors kept 20 participants on therapeutic intervention for the period of one year. The participants recorded to have high levels of suicide ideation on the measure of The Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation - BSI and high levels of suicide potential on the measure of The Zung Index of Potential Suicide (IPS). Participants were trained exclusively on the skills training modules of DBT in individual as well as group settings and their post intervention assessment of depression and hopelessness levels were recorded with the respective tools after every four months (baseline, four, eight and twelve months) respectively. Descriptive statistical analysis (mean and standard deviation) and paired t-test was used to test the significance of mean. The results obtained from the present study recorded the significant decrease in the mean suicide ideation and suicide potential scores from baseline to twelve months (end of therapeutic intervention). The resul