Schools

Guidelines for Schools Responding to Death by Suicide

These guidelines are designed to help school administrators, teachers, and crisis team members respond to the needs of students and staff after a suicide has impacted the school environment as well as when an individual student’s life may be impacted by a suicide within the family. Ideas are offered for addressing the issue of suicide, including how to talk to children about this difficult topic.

The Relationship Between Bullying and Suicide: What We Know and What it Means for Schools

This toolkit outlines bullying and its relationship to suicide, as well as provides information on what schools can do to reduce bulling and hopefully in turn youth suicide.

Talking with Students about Suicide

This quick info sheet provides guidance to educators as they approach this complex topic at school, as part of instruction and/or when this topic is raised by individual or small groups of students.

The Role of High School Teachers in Preventing Suicide

This toolkit is for teachers and shows them how they ca help prevent suicide in their classrooms. Teachers have a significant impact on their students and can also play an active role in suicide prevention by fostering the emotional well-being of all students, not just those already at high risk and this resource demonstrates how to do this.

After a Student Suicide: How To Respod & How To Help

A suicide in a school community is devastating to staff, students and families. Some students may be unable to cope and the community as a whole may struggle with how to respond. In a state of shock, the school community may be uncertain of what steps to take. This toolkit provides practical information to schools after a student has died by suicide.

After a Suicide: A Toolkit for Schools After a Suicide

Develop guidelines for effective comprehensive support programs for individuals bereaved by suicide and promote the full implementation of these guidelines at the state/territorial, tribal, and community levels.

Comprehensive Suicide Prevention Toolkit for Schools

This toolkit addresses suicide prevention and responses to suicidal behaviours in three irrevocably inter connected and interdependent are as:

1. Promotion of mental  and  physical health  and  wellbeing

2. Intervention in a suicidal crisis

3. Postvention response to a suicidal death

Guidelines to assist in responding to attempted suicide or suicide by a student

This document is designed to assist school staff in responding to attempted suicide or suicide by a student and provides a checklist of the immediate and longer term steps that should be taken by school staff.

Identifying and Responding to Suicide Clusters

The guide includes: the meaning of the term ‘suicide cluster’, the identification of clusters, suggestions for who may be at risk of suicidal acts due to the influence of other people’s suicidal behaviour, the likely mechanisms involved, and the effects of suicide (including suicide clusters) on other individuals. The steps that need to be taken at local level to respond to a suicide cluster are described. This necessitates the development of a Suicide Cluster Response Plan and identification of individuals and agencies that will deliver such a plan. The need for close collaboration between organisations and groups involved in a Suicide Cluster Response Plan and those with responsibility for community wellbeing and safeguarding is highlighted.

Preventing and responding to suicide

This resource kit provides information for creating a positive, safe environment in schools. It is an update and synthesis of two previous guides for schools on suicide prevention:

Young People at Risk of Suicide: A guide for Schools (1998)

Youth Suicide Prevention in Schools: A Practical Guide (2003)

Supporting Your Students Mental Health

This toolkit aims to teach students selfcare strategies that can help their overall mental health and wellbeing. Featured chapters are: Focus on Gratitude, Cool Down and Focus, Changing the way we Think About Mental Health, Classroom Accommodations, and Incorporate Empathy. This toolkit is something teachers could share with their classrooms.

Toolkit for Mental Health Promotion and Suicide Prevention

The goal of this Toolkit is to support school communities in improving their well-being. It is designed with parents, students, teachers, school personnel, counselors and health providers in mind. The Toolkit provides tools to help promote mental health, intervene in a mental health crisis, and support members of a school community after the loss of someone to suicide. It is divided into three sections: Promotion of Mental Health and Wellness, Intervention in a Suicidal Crisis, and Postvention Response to Suicide. This Toolkit is designed to prevent the most heartbreaking event, youth suicide. Our hope is to promote well-being and prevent suicide through the measures described in this document.

Working Together To Support Mental Health In Alberta Schools

This resource is an invitation for schools and their partners to reflect on current practices, leverage current initiatives and consider how the promotion of mental health can be more effectively embedded in school and system policies, practices and services. As understanding about mental health, brain development, learning environments and school communities evolves, best practices will also change and evolve. The goal of this resource is to bring together the learning from this work, as well as the latest Canadian research, and help build a shared understanding of how schools, community partners and government can better work together to support mental health. This collaborative effort will ensure that every student in Alberta has the learning opportunities and supports they need to develop positive mental health, be an engaged and successful learner and reach their full potential.

Youth Suicide Prevention A Resource for Teachers, Staff, & Administrators

This manual and resource guide is to be used as a resource for schools to provide guidance to school districts as they update and revise their policies and procedures. The goal of this document is to help you recognize the signs of a struggling student and to know how to proceed once you have identified that a student is at risk. This resource is not intended to be a comprehensive manual for mental health providers, but rather a user-friendly guide for school personnel.

A Comprehensive Cyberbullying Guide for Parents

This webpage outlines cyberbullying and how the internet can be dangerous in regards to mental health. It also provides some methods to help prevent cyberbullying or care for someone who has experienced cyberbullying in order to prevent it from enabling suicide.

Best Practices in School-based Suicide Prevention: A Comprehensive Approach

This guide is intended to provide a framework to help school administrators and their partners develop comprehensive planning for suicide prevention.

Responding to Suicide Attempts in Secondary Schools

This resource aims to support secondary schools where staff suspect or are advised that a student has made a suicide attempt. It outlines what a school response to a suicide attempt should entail, provides a flowchart for quick reference and provides detailed descriptions of key components involved in caring for students at risk.

Research Review: The Effect of School-Based Suicide Prevention on Suicidal Ideation and Suicide Attempts and the Role of Intervention and Contextual Factors Among Adolescents

Schools are logical contexts for adolescent suicide prevention, given their wide-ranging capacity for reaching adolescents and mandate enactment. This meta-analysis addressed the need for rigorous estimation of the population effect of post-primary school-based suicide prevention interventions targeting suicidal thoughts and behaviours as both primary intervention outcomes and with other health and wellbeing outcomes on suicidal thoughts and behaviours in adolescents, evaluated using cluster randomised trial designs. To address the gap in understanding how intervention and contextual factors vary post-primary school-based suicide prevention effectiveness, we examined intervention type, intervention duration, follow-up period, and stakeholder involvement in interventions as moderators, consistent with theoretically and empirically informed intervention and contextual factors in school-based prevention research.

School Psychologists and Suicide Risk Assessment: Role Perception and Competency

As the second leading cause of death for adolescents, suicide has become one of the biggest concerns for school personnel. School psychologists are often expected to be the most competent and able to lead in suicide prevention efforts, however, studies have shown a lack of preparedness in crisis intervention and, more specifically, suicide risk assessment. This study surveyed practicing school psychologists (N = 92) to explore their perception of both their role and competency in suicide risk assessment. While school psychologists reported having varying roles within their district related to suicide risk assessment, the majority endorsed having a role at the tertiary level (i.e., intervening with a student identified as needing help). Participants indicated lacking both graduate training and competency in this area. Significant interactions were found between perceptions of role and competency and primary school setting, state employed, and previous training or exposure.

Well Being in Post Primary Schools: Guidelines for Mental Health Promotion and Suicide Prevention

These Guidelines will be of assistance to schools and the school community in supporting and responding to the mental health and well-being needs of our young people. In addition, the Guidelines will provide a useful support to all post-primary schools in addressing mental health promotion and suicide prevention.