The Chairs of Training Councils (CCTC) held a virtual 6 session conference to achieve together what a single council cannot do alone; a call to action for the Health Service Psychology (HSP) training community. Drs Ciftci and Ponce, co-chairs, and Dr. Hagstrom, Canadian Council of Professional Psychology Programs representative on the steering committee, will share with you the results of this multi-day workshop: a 157 page toolkit to assist programs in acting on long-standing concerns about health-related inequities, social injustice, systemic racism, and the role of unrecognized privilege. The goal was to shift norms, structures, and practices in HSP education and training to ensure that training faculty/supervisors are competent to prepare the next generation of psychologists to be socially responsive. Alongside the other steering committee members and attendees of the 2020 conference, In the spirit of cultural humility, we fully acknowledge that this is not a definitive document, and we recognize that important voices and perspectives may not have been fully represented.

Suicide, suicide attempts, and suicide ideation are difficult to predict and prevent. A practical, evidence-based explanation for suicide would not only empower us to understand and reduce our clients’ suicide risk but help our clients build lives worth living. In this presentation and workshop, I will: a) describe a framework to help distinguish causes of suicide ideation from causes of suicide attempts. b) present an evidence-based, actionable explanation for suicide that is positioned within this framework.c) To utilize case examples and discussion to illustrate the utility of these perspectives for treating suicide risk in clinical practice. Specific questions to be addressed include what motivates suicide, why some (but not most) people with suicide ideation make suicide attempts, and how this knowledge can be used to understand and reduce clients’ risk for suicide.