Collection: Suicide Postvention

For every person who completes suicide, there are a number of people left behind to deal with the impact of the death. This collection addresses those people, the risk and protective factors inherent in suicide grieving, and how the suicide-bereaved can be supported. One frequently affected group is that of mental health professionals, including the suicide prevention workforce. Noting that client suicide is an “occupational hazard” happening to 50% of psychiatrists, one course cites the professional stigmatisation and potential legal/ethical issues that take their toll and explains how post-traumatic growth can occur after a client suicide. In giving an overview of Work Health and Safety terms and obligations, one course proposes a systematic model of psychosocial risk management with an eye to developing and maintaining a stable, psychologically safe environment for the suicide prevention workforce. Another group which is frequently “collateral damage” to a suicide is that of children, so a third course examines how we can protect, support, and empower our children to live in a world where suicide is occurring around them; mass exposure, glamorisation, and normalisation heighten the risk, yet there are ways to mitigate the impacts.

One of the courses acknowledges the increase in mental health issues for many in the wake of the pandemic, and proposes a three-zone Wellness Thermometer to help people monitor their mental health, with compassion for self and others. How shall we grieve when the cause of death is suicide? The Suicide Survivor Model, based on qualitative analysis of nearly 300 sessions, offers a model more relevant than general grief models available. For a more extensive discussion of supporting suicide-bereaved clients, head to the course of the same name to review aspects of grieving from the chief mourning tasks that all go through to the early and ongoing grief reactions of suicide-bereaved individuals, and much more.