About
Dr. Derek J. Lee is an author, suicidologist, clinician, researcher, and educator whose work explores suicide, mental health, hope, and the human experience of caring for others. He is an Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and founder of The Hope Institute, an outpatient suicide-specific treatment model.
Lee’s academic writing focuses on suicide treatment, crisis care, and improving behavioral health systems. His research has been published in scholarly journals, including Archives of Suicide Research. His debut novel, Crisis, brings these themes into fiction, exploring the emotional toll of suicide care through the experiences of a clinician confronting loss, professional responsibility, burnout, and the limits of saving others.
Across his scholarly and creative writing, Lee examines how people endure profound suffering, and how dignity, connection, and hope can help them find a path forward.
Featured Work
Helping Clients Regulate Emotions and Develop Effective Coping Skills A Step-by-Step Guide for Mental Health Professionals
Helping Clients Regulate Emotions and Develop Effective Coping Skills is a step-by-step clinical guide to understanding emotion regulation, developing tools to measure and monitor emotion regulation, and creating individualized and personalized coping tools for clients.
The book explores and explains concepts that are often discussed, but rarely defined, and it teaches techniques that are currently not published. The chapters outline a model for defining mood and consistent scaling that can be used as a treatment tool, providing direction for care and measurables that can be included in clinical notes and for insurance purposes. This book also provides a step-by-step framework that clinicians can use to teach clients how to regulate their emotions and utilize their natural support systems.
Counselors, social workers, psychologists, therapists, and other professionals will come away from this workbook with a deep understanding of what coping is and why it is effective. They’ll also develop a toolbox of techniques that they can use for helping clients develop their own coping skills.
