News & Events
If your school has lost someone to suicide, After a Suicide: A Toolkit for Schools offers best practices and practical tools to help schools in the aftermath of suicide.
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, AFSP have partnered to offer After a Suicide: A Toolkit for Schools to help schools respond in the aftermath of a suicide death.
This newly revised resource (2018) provides information for school administrators and other school staff who wish to implement a coordinated response to the suicide. The toolkit provides information on how best to communicate and support the school community and manage the crisis response. Also found in the toolkit is information on helping students cope, communicating with parents, working with the community, and engaging external resources for support.
While designed primarily for school personnel, the toolkit also contains useful guidance for parents and communities.
The newly updated Second Edition includes:
- Revised information on topics such as social media, memorialization, and contagion
- Updated resource lists
- A new tool to help decide how to appropriately remember and honor a student without contributing to additional emotional trauma or suicide risk
- Examples of how diverse communities have addressed specific issues in responding to a suicide
“13 Reasons” is a series that is very popular with young people. The series is about a teenager who takes her own life. Experts in the field of suicide have concerns about the material in the series as it tends to sensationalize suicide, fails in presenting the counselor or other adults as helpful to the struggling teen, and fails to indicate warning signs that someone may be contemplating suicide. Experts in the field of suicide suggest that parents ask their teens if they have watched the series and what they thought about it. They encourage parents to remind teens that this series is fiction – Hannah is not a real person. These talking points may help you talk with your teen about “13 Reasons”.
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