Resource Types: Guidelines/Recommendations

These guidelines provide tips for organizations and individuals communicating about mental health and suicide on social media to reduce stigma, increase help seeking behavior and help prevent suicide.

Data indicate that working age individuals, especially males, are a population most at risk for suicide. This guide provides clear steps for postvention giving leadership a sense of how to immediately respond to the traumatic event, have a plan in the short-term for recovery, and consider long-term strategies for helping employees cope down the line. The collaborators worked to create a set of guidelines that are useful across varied types of workplaces, and they expect a range of individuals within these organizations and companies to find the information immediately helpful.

A Manager’s Guide to Suicide Postvention in the Workplace provides clear steps for postvention, giving leadership a sense of how to: provide an immediate response to the traumatic event; follow a short-term recovery plan; and develop long-term strategies for helping employees cope. The publication provides succinct procedures with checklists and flow charts and serves as a go-to guide for people dealing with the crisis of suicide. The goal of the guide is to help reduce the impact of the suicide event by offering a blueprint for handling these challenging situations. In addition to providing immediate access to clear steps to take for moving forward in the wake of a traumatic event, the guide helps workplaces plan to move from a solely reactive position to a proactive approach, including policy development and employee training.
The guide was created through the collaboration of numerous experts and organizations, including the American Association of Suicidology, the Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, and the Carson J Spencer Foundation. Collaborators worked to create a set of guidelines that are useful across varied types of workplaces, and they expect a range of individuals within these organizations and companies to find the information immediately helpful. This guide can be useful to managers at all levels–from the CEO of a large business to a front-line supervisor at a small organization.
Objectives:
Managers who use the guide and follow the checklists will have greater ability to:
1. Reduce suicide risk amongst employees after a suicide death.
2. Promote healthy grieving and to link those in need to resources.
3. Transition from suicide postvention to suicide prevention.
Implementation Essential: Managers who use the guide should be familiar with resources and services for employees who may need help.

The Clinical Practice Guideline for the Assessment and Management of Suicide Risk was developed under the auspices of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and the Department of Defense (DoD). VHA and DoD define clinical practice guidelines as: “Recommendations for the performance or exclusion of specific procedures or services derived through a rigorous methodological approach that includes: Determination of appropriate criteria such as effectiveness, efficacy, population benefit, or patient satisfaction; and Literature review to determine the strength of the evidence in relation to these criteria.”

The intent of the guidelines is to:
• Reduce current unwarranted practice variation and provide facilities with a structured framework to help improve patient outcomes (prevent suicide and other forms of suicidal self-directed violent behavior)
• Provide evidence-based recommendations to assist providers and their patients in the decision-making process
• Identify outcome measures to support the development of practice-based evidence that can ultimately be used to improve clinical guidelines.