Treatment of a suicide attempt through psychodynamic therapy in a 17-year-old boy with depression: a case study

We report the case of a 17-year-old boy hospitalized after a violent and dramatic suicide attempt and the interpretative therapy that helped him overcome his depression. His course appeared to be typical of the difficulties encountered by clinicians when in charge of a severely depressed teenager, and of the liability of therapeutic treatment as the patient failed to improve with two consecutive antidepressant trials, and with a first attempted treatment by psychodynamic therapy. The present report stresses that: (i) in some cases, prolonged hospitalization might be helpful in managing treatment of acute phases; (ii) every effort should be made to help a depressed adolescent who attempts suicide to verbalize his experiences and give them meaning, whatever the psychotherapeutic technique. In the case of a suicide attempt with a staged component, the psychodynamic approach appears to be an interesting option as it may help the patient understand his pathological behavior as if it were a dream.