Suicidality: An existential phenomenon.

Abstract

Suicidality in therapy is often addressed through a risk assessment. This process requires alliance building, empathy, compassion, and personal reflection to avoid the potentially stigmatizing and distancing effects of a manualized risk assessment approach. An existential approach to suicidality requires vulnerability within the therapist and emphasizes the human connection between therapist and client. This article uses The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus to provide a frame for suicide largely missing from the psychotherapeutic literature. This existential perspective validates suicidality as a reasonable reaction to the absurdity of existence. Camus's perspective and honesty speak to the empathetic power of existentialism in relation to the painful journey of being human. Human existence requires one to assert their own freedom over their existential situation and create meaning worth living for. Empowering clients to face this tension and create meaning in a world devoid of it can be an important part of the psychotherapeutic process, particularly for clients experiencing suicidality.