This masterclass provides mental health clinicians with a clear, evidence-based, formulation-driven approach to working with persistent suicidality, understood as a survival response rather than an acute crisis alone. Participants will learn how to distinguish persistent suicidality from episodic risk and adjust clinical goals, accordingly, using formulations that integrate neurobiology (threat and safety systems), attachment patterns, and meaning-making, alongside lived experience perspectives. The session focuses on practical, ethically sound interventions that reduce iatrogenic harm and clinician burnout, and that avoid reinforcing suicidality as the primary way a person communicates distress or unmet needs. Principles of working therapeutically with persistent suicidality will be explored, whilst understanding that insight does not automatically lead to change, safety does not require the elimination of suicidal thoughts, and regulation is a necessary foundation for therapeutic progress and meaning making. Clinicians will build confidence in sitting with ongoing risk, navigating clinical and systemic stuck points, and maintaining therapeutic engagement over time.
Prerequisite: Previous experience or training in working with people with BPD, e.g. Foundation Training for Working with People with BPD or BPD Core Competency Workshop delivered by Spectrum.
Who should attend: Any clinician who encounters people with BPD in the course of their work, whether a personality disorder specialist, generalist mental health clinicians, or other physician.
Presenters:
Cathryn Pilcher, Associate Clinical Director
Dr Samantha Tabak, Senior Clinical Psychologist
