Helping Parents Cope with Suicide Threats: An Approach Based on Nonviolent Resistance.

Parent training in nonviolent resistance was adapted to deal with situations of suicide threat by children, adolescents, and young adults. The approach aims at reducing the risk potential and the mutual distress surrounding the threat-interaction. Parent training in nonviolent resistance has been shown to help parents move from helplessness to presence, from isolation to connectedness, from submission to resistance, from escalation to self-control, and from mutual distancing and hostility to care and support. Those emphases can be crucial for the diminution of suicide risk. Parents show good ability to implement the approach and report gains on various areas over and beyond the reduction in suicide threat. A particular advantage is that the method can be used also in cases where the young person threatening suicide is not willing to cooperate.

Parent training in nonviolent resistance for adult entitled dependence.

"Adult entitled dependence" is a condition characterized by the extreme dependence of grown children on their family and by levels of dysfunction, seemingly excessive in light of their apparent capacity to function. The family and the dependent adult become involved in an interaction in which the very attempts to alleviate the problem may aggravate it. Parent-training in nonviolent resistance (NVR) is an intervention that has been shown to be helpful to parents of behaviorally disturbed youth. Parent training in NVR offers parents means to shift away from a stance of helplessness toward realistic goals that are accomplishable without the collaboration of their offspring. We report on the parents of 27 entitled dependent grown children who participated in parent training in NVR. Additionally, we present 2 detailed case studies that exemplify the problem and the therapeutic process. Before treatment, the dependent adults were not working or studying, drew heavily on parental services (financial or otherwise), and were resistant to parental attempts to change the situation. Most parents succeeded in overcoming their helplessness and reducing the provision of parental services. In a considerable proportion of cases, the grown children started working or studying or moved to independent lodgings.