Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW
I am a Denver psychotherapist, consultant, researcher, and professor. Both my clinical practice and research have focused on suicide prevention. I am currently in private practice in Denver as a psychotherapist and consultant, and I am a social work professor at the University of Denver.
We don’t know if suicide rates in the U.S. have gone up since Covid-19 first spread around the country, but it’s not hard to find reports of people whose suicides seem indelibly linked to the pandemic. There’s Dr. Lorna Breen, the ER physician in New York City who worked 18-hour days in the height of […]
“If only I could go to sleep forever.” “I want to die.” “I wish I’d never been born.” Do you ever have thoughts like these, and you do not want to kill yourself? Many people do. They want their life to end, but they don’t want to end their life. If you’re one of those […]
Many people who have suicidal thoughts or other challenges need psychotherapy, but cannot afford it. There are options, though, for receiving therapy without giving up other necessities or going into debt. Here are a dozen: 1. Contact your health insurance company, if you have insurance. Most health insurance companies in the U.S. are required to […]
In a week when two celebrities, Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, died by suicide within days of each other, so did hundreds of other people in the U.S. One of them was named Flinn, a classmate of mine in high school. On Flinn’s public Facebook page, an outpouring of sympathetic posts, one after the other, […]
Many people take offense at my stance on suicide prevention. They send me angry emails or texts. They post challenging comments on this site. Some people are so passionate about the right to die by suicide that they resort to harassment. I have received threatening missives and calls from numerous people, some of whom advise me […]
The popular image of someone who is in danger of suicide goes like this: A person has suicidal thoughts. It’s a crisis. The person gets help, and the crisis resolves within days or weeks. That’s the popular image, and thankfully it does happen for many people. But for others, suicidal thoughts do not go away. […]
Many people desperately want to know what to say – and what not to say – to someone who is thinking of suicide. The article 10 Things Not to Say to a Suicidal Person is SpeakingOfSuicide.com’s most popular post. Almost a half-million people have viewed it in the last 2½ years. Several hundred have left […]
People in the suicide prevention field discourage the use of the term “committed suicide.” The verb “commit” (when followed by an act) is generally reserved for actions that many people view as sinful or immoral. Someone commits burglary, or murder, or rape, or perjury, or adultery, or crime – or something else bad. Suicide is […]
The ethical and legal obligations of confidentiality remain after a psychotherapist’s client dies, but how much? There is a lot of confusion around this. Here, I address what therapists can say or do with the client’s family while honoring the client’s confidentiality. First, be warned: I am not a lawyer, so my opinions represent a […]
I advise my students to ask their suicidal clients, “What stops you? What stops you from killing yourself?” Some are horrified. They see this almost as a dare, as if they are saying to a hurting, suicidal person, If you really wanted to kill yourself, you would have done it already. What stops you? To […]
