Where Angels Fear to Tread: An Exploration of Having Conversations about Suicide in a Counselling Context

Where Angels Fear to Tread highlights some of the ethical and emotional challenges which arise for counsellors when their clients thoughts and behaviours become suicidal. It gives insight into how people can, and do, use suicide as a way of coping with overwhelming emotional pain, and the tension this creates in the balance between the ethical guidelines the counselling profession has adopted to protect clients against malpractice (and protect counsellors against litigation) and the needs and viewpoint of the client. The book also shows a dynamic narrative research methodology in action. There has been a deliberate move away from the traditional expert and subject positions predominating research, and priority given to the telling of previously marginalised stories in ways that are evocative, congruent with the therapeutic endeavour. The research process is shown as a social construction of lived experience that navigates the borders between narrative research and narrative therapy conveying a distinctive perspective on both the subject matter and the dynamics of both therapeutic and research relationships. It is hoped that the book will engage academics, counsellors, postgraduate students interested in narrative methodologies, and indeed those developing suicide prevention policies, in debate about how to develop practices that do not negate the voice of those who have suicidal thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.