Working at the Limits: Suicide, Organisational Anxiety and the Cost of Not Knowing

A day for people who work with the risk of suicide in the Highlands. Open to NHS, Third Sector, Police and Emergency Services, Social Care, Community and Faith groups. 

Presented by Dr Rachel Gibbons, the day creates space to think about suicide, uncertainty and the organisational defences that can arise when systems are asked to know what cannot be known with certainty. The sequencing matters: thinking only becomes possible after dread is named.

Dr Rachel Gibbons is a consultant psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and group analyst, and a leading voice on the psychodynamics of suicide, self harm and homicide, with particular focus on the their impact on clinicians and the bereaved. She has worked on the frontline of NHS mental health services for over 20 years. She chaired the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Working Group on the Effect of Suicide and Homicide on Psychiatrists, led its Patient Safety Group, and is Vice Chair of the Psychotherapy Faculty. She led the development of two RCPsych guidance documents on the pastoral care of staff following a patient's death by suicide or a patient-perpetrated homicide, with the guidance now incorporated into England's National Suicide Prevention Strategy (2023). She is co-editor of the RCPsych book Seminars in the Psychotherapies, Clinical Director of the charity Making Families Cout, and special advisor to the Maytree Suicide Sanctuary. She received the RCPsych President's Medal in 2024 and the British Psychoanalytic Society's Outstanding Contributions to the Dissemination of Psychoanalysis Award in 2026. Her papers and resources are freely shared from drrachelgibbons.co.uk