Veteran and Partner Interest in Addressing Suicidality From a Couple-Based Treatment Approach

Theories of suicide highlight the importance of healthy interpersonal connection and research has found that relationship problems are the most frequently endorsed stressor preceding attempts. However, established suicide interventions are individually focused and do not directly address the relational context. Additionally, it is unclear whether a couple-based suicide intervention would be acceptable to veterans and their partners. Utilizing two different treatment-seeking samples (N = 91), we examined veterans' and partners' desire for and willingness to engage in a couple-based suicide intervention and whether interest in such an intervention correlated with demographics or clinical symptom severity. Findings suggested that veterans and their partners have talked about suicidal thoughts with one another to some extent (77.7%-86.8%), are interested in a couple-based suicide intervention (55.3%-61.5%) or willing to learn more (23.1%-33.3%), and think their partners would be interested (47.4%-61.5%) or willing to learn more (26.9%-42.1%). There were few predictors of differences in interest. Overall, a couple-based suicide intervention appears to be acceptable and desirable by veterans in crisis and their partners.