Building a Suicide-Safe
School Community:
K-12 Suicide Prevention & Postvention Training
An aspect of suicide prevention often overlooked is how to integrate students who attempt suicide back to school and how to appropriately deal with the death of a student by suicide. This is called “postvention” because it encompasses the actions taken after a suicide attempt or death. Click below for a training developed by experts in the field of suicide and violence prevention.
K-12 school personnel interact everyday with youth who have complex educational, social and personal needs. Balancing its educational mission with the community expectation to keep children and youth safe and healthy can be challenging. Increasingly school personnel are expected to screen, spot, and respond to students experiencing a crisis. This includes students are thinking of suicide or who have the potential to hurt others.
Nebraska educators can complete 2 of the 3 following modules to satisfy their annual suicide prevention training requirement:
Module 1: Introduction
Appropriate for all K-12 school personnel, includes a brief summary of what to look for and how to respond to a student who may be experiencing thoughts of suicide.
Module 2: Postvention Responses for Faculty and Staff
Appropriate for K-12 faculty and staff, includes information about how to integrate a student back to the classroom or school activity environment after a suicide attempt; and what you need to know and do in the classroom or school activity after a death by suicide.
Module 3: Postvention Responses for School Administrators and Professional Staff
Appropriate for administrators and helping professionals (counselors, nurses, social workers, psychologists), includes information about how to plan for and manage reintegration of students who have attempted suicide; and how to plan for and manage learning environments after a death by suicide.
Resources
The following resources were used in the online suicide postvention training. This includes several websites (right) and the other resources highlighted (below).
