TRAINING and CONSULTING SERVICES

Workshops for Mental Health Professionals

Training and Consulting Services offers full-day workshops for mental health professionals responsible for the assessment, treatment, or management of suicidal clients. These workshops are a unique blend of clinical and legal "best practices" that ensure a professionally sound and legally defensible work product. Training programs are applicable to any clinical setting or mental health discipline and have been conducted across the country for direct service providers such as nurses, social workers, drug counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists. Workshops are designed to be thought-provoking and interactive, utilizing a variety of teaching techniques to explore the ethical and clinical aspects of suicide assessment and risk management.

During the course of the workshops participants are introduced to basic research on suicide as well as the fundamental legal criteria that will be used to judge their work in the event of a lawsuit. They are then instructed how to conduct assessments using a simple, user-friendly protocol that simultaneously addresses both the clinical and legal aspects of a suicide assessment. This protocol ensures the collection of acknowledged suicide risk factors, objectively assesses the collected data, and organizes a final report that is clinically relevant and legally defensible. Participants use a dramatized scenario to apply the protocol during a client interview. These proven principles and methods have already provided authoritative guidance to hundreds of clinician’s who have increased their assessment and intervention skills. The principles presented in Dr. White's workshops teach practitioners to perform suicide assessments and manage suicidal individuals in a manner that facilitates effective treatment while giving them a greater degree of protection from unfounded litigation.

Dr. White specializes in workshops tailored to the assessment and management of incarcerated offenders. These popular workshops focus on how to apply traditional mental health treatment techniques to the specific needs and characteristics of this unique client population This material has been used as the basis for specialty training in large correctional systems, for new psychologists training in the Bureau of Prisons, and in several academic settings. Dr. White is an acknowledged correctional expert who has provided workshops for many state, local, and federal correctional organizations as well as to nationally recognized correctional organizations including the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, the American Association of Suicidology, American Correctional Health Services Association, national conventions of the American Psychological Association, and the North American Correctional and Criminal Justice Conference.