FORUMS: Mental Health in Colleges and Universities

Safety Agreement: Brief Intervention for Suicidal Risk Reduction

  • ZHAO Jialu ,
  • YANG Zeyun ,
  • CAI Zhiyong
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  • 1Center for Counselling and Psychological Development, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China;
    2Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China;
    3Department of Psychological Health Education, Nanjing Audit University, Nanjing 211815, China
*ZHAO Jialu, jialuzhao@tsinghua.edu.cn

Online published: 2024-06-14

Abstract

Suicidal issues of college students have attracted widespread attention, and prevention and intervention of suicide crisis are the focus of mental health services in colleges. Safety agreement is a written agreement between the consultant and client. On the basis of clients’ promise of not committing suicide, both parties jointly work out a set of coping strategies to reduce the immediate risk of suicide. This article sorts out and summarizes the literature on suicide crisis and safety agreement, and it introduces and interprets around the safety agreement documents issued by the Registration Working Committee for Clinical Psychology of Chinese Psychological Society. The agreement consists of six parts: (1) an explicit statement of the client’s promise not to commit suicide / self-injury; (2) the start and end time of the agreement; (3) suicide crisis response action plan; (4) the contact person and institution that can be reached out for helping in crisis situations; (5) written signature of clients; (6) precautions for the use of safety agreement. The safety agreement can provide specific guidance for the implementation of intervention in college.

Cite this article

ZHAO Jialu , YANG Zeyun , CAI Zhiyong . Safety Agreement: Brief Intervention for Suicidal Risk Reduction[J]. Psychological Communications, 2022 , 5(2) : 91 -96 . DOI: 10.12100/j.issn.2096-5494.222017

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