Exploring the Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Approaches to World Suicide Prevention Day 2025

Milton Sattler
2 days ago
4 min read

**Promoting hope and understanding on World Suicide Prevention Day. Let's support each other and spread the message that every life is valuable.**

10 September 2025 marks World Suicide Prevention Day, an initiative guided by Samaritans in collaboration with individuals who have lived experience of suicidal thoughts. This day serves as a necessary platform for raising awareness, sharing insights, and emphasizing both intervention and therapeutic understanding.

Framing the problem: why depth-oriented therapies matter

Prevention strategies commonly emphasise crisis response, risk assessment and safety planning. These are essential. However, suicide and repeated self-harm often arise from enduring intrapsychic and relational vulnerabilities — unresolved trauma, chronic affect dysregulation, impoverished mentalising capacities, and internalised patterns of self-attack — which are the core focus of psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapies. Depth-oriented approaches therefore address pathways to suicidality that are not fully targeted by short, symptom-focused interventions alone.

(See NHS England’s contemporary guidance Staying Safe from Suicide, which emphasises person-centred assessment and management alongside safety planning.) NHS England

https://youtu.be/MKQen95SWqE

Psychoanalytic Insight into Suicidal States

From early psychoanalytic theory on the death drive to more contemporary understandings of internal conflict and self-destructiveness, psychoanalysis illuminates the complex psychic structures and unconscious dynamics that fuel suicidal thoughts. Through therapeutic relationships that permit reflection, containment, and meaning-making, patients can confront destructive affects and reconfigure self and relational patterns.

Yellow ribbon symbolizing suicide prevention awareness, marking World Suicide Prevention Day on September 10.

Evidence Supporting Psychodynamic Psychotherapy in Suicide Prevention

Recent clinical research attests to the effectiveness of psychodynamic psychotherapy in mitigating suicidal ideation and self-harm. Its therapeutic depth supports emotion regulation, trauma processing, and the development of internal resilience. As such, psychodynamic therapy complements immediate interventions like NHS England’s Staying Safe from Suicide resource—offering patients both safety and a deeper path toward psychological integration.

Read Staying Safe from Suicide here.

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses: what the evidence shows

The best available syntheses indicate that psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapies can reduce suicide attempts and self-harm and improve psychosocial outcomes — but the evidence base is still limited in size and quality, and more high-quality RCTs are needed.

A systematic review and meta-analysis published in The British Journal of Psychiatry concluded that psychoanalytic/psychodynamic psychotherapies are potentially effective in reducing suicide attempts and self-harm and improving some related risk factors, while noting the relatively small number and heterogeneity of RCTs included and a need for further rigorous trials. Cambridge University Press & Assessment PubMed
Broader meta-analyses and network meta-analyses of psychotherapeutic interventions for self-injury and suicidal outcomes indicate that psychotherapy broadly reduces suicidal ideation and some suicide-related outcomes, but effect sizes vary across modalities and target populations; methodological limitations across trials (small samples, variable outcomes) temper firm conclusions about superiority of any single modality. These reviews call for better-powered, standardized RCTs with suicide-relevant endpoints. JAMA Network PubMed

Mechanisms of action identified in research

Trials and process studies suggest several plausible mechanisms by which psychodynamic and psychodynamic-informed therapies reduce suicidality:

Improvement in mentalising capacity (the ability to make sense of one’s own and others’ mental states), which reduces impulsive, affect-driven acts of self-harm. PMC
Enhanced affect regulation and containment of intolerable states that previously precipitated suicidal action. Cambridge University Press & Assessment
Reworking of internal object relations (reducing persecutory self-representations) and strengthening the therapeutic alliance — both repeatedly associated with reduced suicidal behaviour across psychodynamic trials. Cambridge University Press & Assessment

Despite these promising mechanisms, research also emphasises heterogeneity: different psychodynamic models, dose/duration of therapy, and patient characteristics moderate outcomes. Trials of MBT and other psychodynamic programs typically involve medium-to-long treatment durations and structured delivery, which may be important for durable change.

Policy Perspective: BPC’s Ongoing Advocacy

Policy interventions play a pivotal role. Patrick Cusworth, Head of Policy and Public Affairs at the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC), offers an analysis of the UK’s policy environment concerning suicide prevention. His piece argues for the inclusion of psychodynamic psychotherapy in national strategies—highlighting the importance of access, equity, and therapeutic depth in prevention frameworks.

Read Patrick Cusworth’s policy reflection here. Explore the BPC’s broader policy initiatives here.

Suicide is the main cause of death in young people under the age of 35 in the UK. In 2023, 1,840 young people under the age of 35 took their own lives in the UK. Around three-quarters of them were boys or young men. On average, around five young people take their lives each day. — Suicide is the main cause of death in young people under the age of 35 in the UK. In 2023, 1,840 young people under the age of 35 took their own lives in the UK. **Around three-quarters of them were boys or young men**. On average, around five young people take their lives each day.

Depth Psychology in Dialogue: This Jungian Life Podcast

A valuable complement to written and clinical discourse is the Jungian depth-psychology podcast This Jungian Life. Episode 134, “When Despair Prevails: Facing Suicidal Darkness”, probes the psychic turbulence of suicidal pain through a symbolic lens. The hosts describe how “archetypal” affect can overwhelm ego capacities, and highlight the healing potential in symbolic thinking and the presence of a supportive other. Crucially, they pose the reflective question: What must die internally—values, ambitions, or expectations—to prevent the concretization of suicidal despair as physical death? This Jungian Life

This episode enriches the conversation by highlighting how depth-oriented language and symbolic frames can offer both clinicians and listeners a reflective space to hold and transform suicidality.

Conclusion: Integrating Immediate Support, Policy, and Depth Therapy

World Suicide Prevention Day is both an urgent call to action and an invitation to deeper understanding. Suicide prevention must integrate:

Crisis resources and safety planning, such as those offered by NHS England;
Therapeutic access, particularly to psychodynamic and psychoanalytic approaches; and
Policy advocacy that recognizes and funds the role of depth-oriented therapies in prevention.

Psychodynamic psychotherapy offers a distinct pathway—not only towards survival in crisis, but toward psychological renewal. When supported by compassionate policy and enriched by symbolically attuned discourse (such as that offered in This Jungian Life), the path toward prevention deepens and gains hope.

#WorldSuicidePreventionDay