Talk therapy helped reduce suicides among high-risk groups by as much as 26 percent over a five-year period compared to people who had no therapy,
according to a study published in the medical journal Lancet Psychiatry.
Johns Hopkins University researchers examined data from followed more than 5,000 Danish citizens who had attempted suicide and received talk, or psychosocial, counseling and then compared them with those who attempted suicide and who were not exposed to such therapy,
according to the BBC News.
The study's participants volunteered for six to 10 talking therapy sessions at suicide prevention clinics in Denmark and were followed up on for 20 years.
"Our findings show a lower risk of repeated deliberate self-harm and general mortality in recipients of psychosocial therapy after short-term and long-term follow-up, and a protective effect for suicide after long-term follow-up, which favor the use of psychosocial therapy interventions after deliberate self-harm," stated the interpretation of the Lancet study.
Even though the study was not conducted with a randomized controlled trial, an intervention of such time would have been ethically impossible,
Time magazine reported.
"These findings might be the best evidence available and provide a sound basis for policy makers who wish to limit suicidal behavior and fatal events in an accessible high-risk group, which, in many countries, receives little support," the report stated.
Annette Erlangsen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said the study is evidence that counseling can be as effective as medication in helping at-risk suicide patients overcome such tendencies.
"We know that people who have attempted suicide are a high-risk population and that we need to help them," Erlangsen told the BBC News. "However, we did not know what would be effective in terms of treatment. Now we have evidence that psychosocial treatment - which provides support, not medication - is able to prevent suicide in a group at high risk of dying by suicide."
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