I’ve been in the field of suicide prevention for almost 30 years. When I started out as a psychologist, there were no empirically valid treatments for suicidal people, in part, because many studies of mental health disorders actually excluded suicidal subjects. In addition, the treatments for suicidality often targeted the conditions believed to be underlying the suicidality, such as depression. Yet, what researchers have recently discovered is that targeting the person’s suicidality directly is precisely what works best to save a life.