SAN ANTONIO – For many people, this is a ray of hope based on research.

Latest research offers a new way of thinking suicide preventionand experts and patients alike believe it is already saving lives.

Retired U.S. Air Force veteran Nancy Dickinson spent much of her 23 years of service in war zones like Iraq.

“My family was bombed all day, all night, trying to keep the generators running at their medical care facility,” Dickinson said.

Dickinson brought that trauma with him when he retired from active duty and settled in San Antonio.

“I knew if I didn’t get help, things would get worse quickly. I handled the suicides,” Dickinson said.

He knows full well that many active duty and veterans do not hear this call for help.

“It breaks my heart that I have siblings who are afraid to ask for help. And we lose as much as we lose every day. That’s not true,” Dickinson said.

That’s why Dickinson wants everyone to know about an innovative life-changing therapy.

Psychiatrist Dr. “We have historically thought of suicide as a symptom of mental illness or a consequence of mental illness, even though most people who die by suicide do not have a mental illness,” said Craig Bryan. Professor and researcher at Ohio State University.

Bryan works closely with UT Health San Antonio POWERFUL STAR program focusing on military mental health care. It is a consortium of 50 institutions, including the military.

“Everything we’ve learned about suicide, we do all these things and it doesn’t seem to work. Maybe it’s time for us to rethink this whole approach, and maybe if we do that we can be more successful,” Bryan said.

At a conference in San Antonio this week, Bryan presented his book, ‘Rethinking Suicide,’ which chronicles years of research and goal-directed therapy.

The therapy is called Brief Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Suicide Prevention (BCBT).

It’s just 10-12 sessions that focus on the stress response, not just anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This means it can only be applied to anyone who meets one criterion: someone who has suicidal thoughts or has attempted suicide.

“We look at how you respond or react to stressful situations. How do you think about yourself, about the situations you find yourself in? And we help people identify these unhelpful patterns that are often overly critical or overly negative. We’re saying, maybe let’s start taking a more balanced perspective, which might lead them to make different decisions,” Bryan said.

Patients then spend weeks practicing and rehearsing coping strategies.

“Over time, the person starts to react and respond. You still get upset. Life happens. But people make different decisions,” Bryan said.

Therapy involves something called crisis intervention planning, which creates a definitive checklist of what to do when thoughts become negative.

“It overrides tunnel vision, and people can then easily do something that helps them start the problem-solving process. Managing what I’m feeling, reaching out to others for support,” Bryan said.

Although crisis intervention planning is part of BCBT, doctors can extract it and use it separately for other patients.

“Extremely effective. It reduces suicide attempts by 76% compared to traditional suicide prevention strategies,” Bryan explained.

If patients have mental health problems, such as PTSD, they also treat these appropriately.

“Historically, there has been a mindset among mental health clinicians that we shouldn’t treat PTSD when someone is suicidal; This is very risky. We now know from the work we did during my time at STRONG STAR nearly a decade ago, and which continues to this day, that this is, in fact, wrong,” said Bryan.

The paradigm shift is so promising that the military is partially financing it.

“Many service members and veterans are volunteering for research studies that will help us make these treatments better than they are now,” Bryan said.

It will be a full cycle of progress.

“We can learn from them, and as we make new discoveries to improve quality of life, to prevent suicide, to accelerate healing from trauma, we will give that back to them,” Bryan said.

However, progress on integration into military health services has been slow.

“It’s not being integrated right now. I think this is one of the most important problems. There is a huge disconnect right now between military funding and finding solutions but not actually using them. So we hope that we can work with the military to change that in the coming years,” said Bryan.

Although military integration has not yet been achieved, Dr. Bryan’s team is currently training other clinicians in this therapy.

UT Health San Antonio created the infrastructure for this training and the USAA Education Foundation funds it.

“The most important part is after that; clinicians continue to meet with some of our experts to get supervision to coach them on how to use therapy effectively. It’s harder for you to actually use procedures reliably when you have someone in your room, in your office, saying, ‘I’m thinking of killing myself.’ .And so we provide very close, ongoing support and supervision to assist clinicians,” said Bryan.

Knowing firsthand how many lives this could save, Dickinson is excited to see this shift in thinking opening the door to more discussion and less stigma.

“It’s been 20 years and I’m still going to counseling. I’m still on PTSD meds. “It changed my life,” he said.

Dickinson hopes that anyone suffering from suicidal thoughts, whether they have a mental illness or not, will reach out for help.

If you’re struggling with suicidal thoughts, there is help. Call or text 988 for help or 988 Lifeline website.

Military members or veterans can contact STRONG STAR at 210-562-6700 or visit website.