Family Therapy Helps Teens With Suicidal Thoughts
A CHOP Research team led by Guy Diamond, PhD, director of the Center for Family Intervention Science, found that adolescents with severe suicidal thinking treated with Attachment-Based Family Therapy (ABFT) were at least four times more likely to have no suicidal thinking at the end of treatment or three months after treatment than patients treated in the community were. Patients in ABFT also showed a more rapid decrease in depression symptoms and remained in treatment longer than in community care, even with additional supports provided by the study. Published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, this is the first treatment study for teen suicidal ideation to show robust and statistically significant improvement over treatment as usual.
