Implications for practice and research

• Attempted Suicide Short Intervention Program (ASSIP), a brief suicide-specific approach, may be used to assess and rectify maladaptive coping strategies and promote alternative healthy coping mechanisms for people at risk of suicide reattempt.

• Realist evaluation can provide an opportunity to appraise the ASSIP as it may work differently in different contexts (place, person and time).

Context

Suicide is increasingly regarded as a dysfunctional and distorted strategy aimed to resolve personal problems.1 Brief therapeutic interventions targeting ‘suicide as the focus of care’ are trending.2 The ASSIP, a brief intervention for suicide risk reduction and prevention, provides a therapeutic environment for people with attempted suicide to build self-understanding, to develop insight into their personal …