New Book
Assessing and Treating Suicidal Thinking and Behaviors in Children and Adolescents
A Play Therapy Guide for Mental Health Professionals in Clinical and School-Based Settings
Assessing and Treating Suicidal Thinking and Behaviors in Children and Adolescents
A Play Therapy Guide for Mental Health Professionals in Clinical and School-Based Settings
Edited By Leslie W. Baker and Mary Ruth Cross
Copyright 2025
A guide for dealing with kids and teenagers who show up with overt or covert suicidal ideas, intentions, or thoughts.
The chapters concentrate on supporting parents, caregivers, families, and schools while also examining a variety of therapy modalities. The chapters include evidence-based methods including dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), and prescriptive play therapy in addition to emphasizing expressive therapies.
This book will equip expressive therapists, school-based counselors, and other clinicians who work with at-risk kids and teens from a variety of communities and backgrounds with the skills necessary to incorporate each child’s strengths, sources of distress, and available resources to create a treatment plan that is a developmentally appropriate treatment plan.
Biographies
Leslie W. Baker is the CEO and owner of Therapy2Thrive® Ruby Hill Marriage and Family Counseling Center, an outpatient clinic in California.
Mary Ruth Cross is the CEO and owner of Treehouse Family Counseling Services, an outpatient clinic focused on play therapy treatment with children and families.
Endorsements
Courtesy of www.routledge.com/
This is an incredibly timely and useful resource, one that will be helpful for the novice and seasoned practitioner and supervisor alike. Baker and Cross address assessment, treatment, and prevention, to deal with the obvious and hidden signs of suicidal thinking, preoccupation, and planning. Many of the chapters are written by Baker and Cross from a prescriptive play therapy lens. The other chapters feature renowned authors and cover racial and cultural differences and inclusion, age and gender, ethics, neurodivergence, psychiatry, countertransference, school settings and technology, and special issues utilizing expressive arts and play therapy approaches. This comprehensive book will not be a one-time read but rather a resource to return to again and again. For those of us on the front lines of treatment, as well as play therapy leaders teaching and mentoring the rising generations of play therapists, this is absolutely required reading.
This much-needed text addresses one of the most challenging and detrimental issues faced by clinicians working with children and adolescents. It is theoretically sound, comprehensive, and practical. Breaking new ground in the field, this publication will serve the needs of both novice and seasoned clinicians as they work with one of our most vulnerable populations.
925-998-3392
Contact Leslie Baker in Pleasanton for a confidential, no obligation 15 minute-telephone consultation on marriage, teen and family counseling.
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