A Postvention Primer

Postvention is a process that follows a suicide. College programs include efforts to provide psychological support and crisis intervention, stabilize the environment, and limit the risk of further suicides.

Crucial components of this kind of plan, according to the Higher Education Mental Health Alliance and other experts, should include:

Communication

Appoint one member of your team to notify and follow up with the family of the person who died. Notify only those students and staff and faculty members who were close to the person — friends, significant others, classmates, fellow club members, teammates. Offer enough information, within legal and practical constraints, to deter frustration and conspiracy theories. But avoid details specific enough to sensationalize, glorify, or sentimentalize the death, or to trigger morbid thoughts. Encourage campus and other news-media outlets to follow those same parameters for the sake of public health, and to offer contact information for mental-health resources.

Counseling services

Offer a variety of group and individual support options. Keep them optional; don’t require campuswide meetings. Clinical interventions should include information on topics like the factors that may contribute to suicidal thinking, among them relationship or family problems and diagnosed clinical conditions; the range of emotions that often follow a suicide; the spectrum of ways in which people grieve; and the importance of self-care

Limits on memorialization

If possible, avoid and discourage memorial events. If they occur, make counselors available and encourage speakers to avoid casting the suicide as heroic or romantic. Instead, normalize seeking help, coming together as a campus community, and looking to the future. Fund raising or other service actions may be a constructive way for students to channel their grief and their need to take action.

Follow up

If appropriate, add fencing, netting, or awnings, as well as obscuring vertical sight lines in locations like bridges and higher stories of parking garages that might prove tempting to a potentially self-harming student. Block access to chemicals, firearms, and other potentially lethal instruments. Track and analyze data to see if there are higher rates of death by suicide among particular demographic groups, academic concentrations, or other categories. Increase attention to those students whom data suggest may be more at risk.

—Alexander C. Kafka