ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses upon the most pertinent challenges affecting the implementation of psychological interventions for the prevention of suicide in prison settings. It offers some helpful considerations and suggestions to the therapist faced with overcoming such challenges. Prisoners are identified as a high-risk group in the National Suicide Prevention Strategy for England, and the development of evidence-based suicide prevention interventions for prisoners is highly recommended. The current situation presents clinical psychology with an opportunity to rise to a long-standing challenge and offer a different perspective on the assessment and intervention of vulnerable prisoners at risk. An issue encountered early in the work in delivering the Cognitive Behavioural Suicide Prevention (CBSP) therapy to prisoners at risk of suicide is the potential for some prisoners to be judged by prison staff as manipulative/attention-seeking. The research theme improves the way such that vulnerable patients are treated and reduce the economic and social costs of ineffective treatments for these patients in other services.
