Suicide Postvention

Suicide Postvention

You’re probably familiar with the term suicide prevention, but you may be less familiar with the phrase suicide postvention. Suicide postvention refers to the support provided to those affected by the death of someone by suicide. In this article we are going to direct you to some key resources which can be used to develop both organisational and individual suicide postvention planning and support.

We all experience bereavement at some point in our lives and it’s normal to feel things like sadness, disbelief, confusion or even anger. Bereavement following a suicide can bring an even more complex set of feelings and has been described as “grief with the volume turned up”. If you have been bereaved following a colleague’s suicide, we have a Coping with Grief article, which may help you and your colleagues with what you are experiencing. You may also benefit from working through an Experiencing the death of a colleague series of e-modules. You’ll need a Turas account to access the modules, but anyone can create an account for free – you’ll just need an email address.

The Samaritans, in partnership with the NHS Confederation have compiled a suicide postvention toolkit to help organisations manage the impact and provide support following the suicide of an employee. We recommend reading the toolkit, particularly if you have responsibility for other staff as part of your role. It contains practical information to help ensure you are prepared should a member of your staff die by suicide, what to do immediately following their death, as well as what to expect in the subsequent weeks and months. We also recommend using the Help is at Hand booklet from the Support After Suicide Partnership, and distributing this around your team, to better understand what may be happening and how you may be feeling following a death by suicide.

Cruse Scotland are funded by the Scottish Government to provide free bereavement support for workplaces affected by suicide, whether that is the death by suicide of a colleague, client or patient. If this is something which could benefit your team, you can find more information about the support provided on the Cruse Scotland Website.

It is worth keeping a note of some organisations with online support or websites in case you either need to signpost staff members to them or make use of their support yourself, such as the Samaritans and Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide. Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide run local and virtual support groups, as well as providing bereavement support both by phone and via email. They’ve also created loads of handy resources such as their Support after Suicide booklet.

The Samaritans run free online peer support groups for people bereaved by suicide. These “Facing the Future” groups provide the opportunity to meet and speak with others who have lost someone to suicide. For further information about Facing the Future groups and to book a place on one, visit the Samaritans website.

You may be in a position where you have to communicate the news of a suicide death to your team or wider colleagues. It can be difficult to know what to say and, equally importantly, what not to say, at this time. The Samaritans have produced a set of guidelines for reporting suicide. Although these were primarily developed to guide reporting and depictions of suicide in the media, they contain some very helpful tips which can be adapted for use when communicating or discussing the death of a colleague.

Public Health Scotland and NHS Education for Scotland have developed a set of free suicide prevention digital resources including an eLearning module which will help you learn basic suicide awareness and prevention skills. If you are concerned that one of your colleagues is experiencing suicidal thoughts, they may benefit from using the Stay Alive App. This is a free app which can be downloaded from the Google Play store or Apple App store and is full of tools and resources to help people stay safe from suicide. If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts yourself, then please also try the app.

Everyone will respond to the suicide of a colleague in a different way, and all will experience their own recovery journey. Research tells us, however, that being connected to good support systems including the support of trusted colleagues, peers, family and friends, as well as taking care of both mental and physical health can help a lot. You and your team can learn about developing your own psychological first aid kit to help you stay well in challenging times by completing our Psychological First Aid kit reflective learning module.

A supportive working environment is a hugely important factor in keeping staff well following any critical incident, including a suicide. We recommend having a look at our articles on Peer Support, Trauma Informed Practice and Psychological Safety to give you some ideas of things you can do to create a workplace which is supportive of staff wellbeing. It’s also always important for staff to know where they can go to find information and support to keep themselves well, and keeping them informed about the National Wellbeing Hub, in particular our Caring for You sections, are a simple way to do so.

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