Effectiveness of Cognitive Therapy for Suicide Attempters With Drug Dependence Disorder

The cognitive therapy intervention for suicide attempters has been designed to provide a brief, timely, flexible intervention that can be incorporated into general and psychiatric inpatient and outpatient services and applied to the population of patients who attempt suicide. A central feature of the intervention is the adaptation of cognitive therapy to the population of patients who attempt suicide. The focus of the intervention is the identification of core beliefs and key automatic thoughts that were elicited prior to and during the most recent suicide attempt. Once these beliefs and thoughts have been articulated, the counselor and patient develop more adaptive responses during an acute suicidal crisis.

The Enriched Care condition will be used as the treatment comparison condition for this study. The Enriched Care condition consists of the usual care that patients may obtain in the community as well as the assessment and referral services provided by the case managers. Participation in the study does not restrict patients in any way in their access to other health care, and all patients in both conditions will be allowed to receive any additional mental health and substance abuse treatment in the community.