In the weeks prior to my most recent suicide attempt 11 years ago, I denied I was suicidal to anyone who asked. I was in a partial hospitalization program (PHP), and my thinking was that I needed to get back to work, and that I did not want to be admitted to the psychiatric hospital—which is certainly what would have happened because not only was I thinking about suicide, but I had a definitive plan and time frame.

In their book, Secrets and Lies in Psychotherapy , co-authors Barry Farber, Matt Blanchard, and Melanie Love state that concealing or hiding thoughts about suicide is the third-most-commonly reported lie that clients tell their therapists, with 31 percent of one study’s respondents answering positively to this question.

There were times when I first started working w

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