As we come to the end of Suicide Awareness Month and as I continue to struggle with my own mental health, including suicidal ideation at times. I wanted to do at least one podcast episode focusing on suicide in an effort to help support others. Therefore, about a week ago when I was suicidal and crying a lot, my best friend mentioned how suicide happens in clusters (at times) and if I killed myself then I would transfer all my pain to them. Now partly my best friend was saying that because one of my whole reasons to stay alive is so I don’t hurt them. However, it got me thinking about how suicides can create ripples in social communities and in groups, and schools are a great example of the damaging impact of these ripples. As a result, in this clinical psychology episode, you’ll learn why suicides need to be supported after suicide loss, how can schools support students after suicide loss and how we can create a more supportive school environment. If you enjoy learning about suicide, mental health and suicide postvention then this is a great episode for you.
Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Suicide Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
Why Is It Important To Support Students After Suicide Loss?
Whenever people learn that someone they know has committed suicide, they are filled with grief, confusion as well as utter shock, and this is even more intense for young people. Typically, leading a day transforming from a normal, ordinary day into one that could change and mark their lives forever, so we need to look after young people. Since if we don’t look after young people following a suicide loss then we risk their stories and lives become shaped by risk and not towards a life of healing after this tragic loss.
Furthermore, we need to remember that for young people their schools, and universities to be honest, are social hubs where they meet and see their friends, laugh and make great fun plans for the future. Even if it is only going cinema at the weekend or planning to play online video games together later that night.
This is why schools are critical for what’s known as suicide postvention. These are organised efforts that happen after a suicide to promote healing within the community, limit the suffering of those in the community and prevent additional suicides. This links back to what I said earlier about suicides can happen in clusters, especially amongst children and young people.
In addition, an online article by Anna Mueller updated in 2019 explained how a young person’s vulnerability to suicide increases after one of their friends either died or attempted suicide. In other words, without postvention support, suicides can increase within the community.
Unfortunately, a lot of schools don’t follow best practices and they don’t always have a good, effective plan in place.
How To Support Students After Suicide Loss?
Give Students Time and Space To Heal
Given how tragic, confusing and shocking a suicide loss can be for a school community, it’s important that schools understand just how painful these events can be for children. As well as teenagers need time to grieve what has happened because without this time, they cannot begin to heal in the slightest.
Furthermore, whilst a lot of schools will want to get back to “normal” as soon as possible because they might strongly believe this is what’s best for the students (and their grades and the school’s funding). This isn’t typically helpful. Since some students will find “normal” comforting because it will give them structure and routine, but other young people will find this approach very painful and like the person who died by suicide just didn’t matter.
All because the school’s world just marches on like nothing happened.
Personally, I understand this because this is something that my best friend was saying to me if I did kill myself. Their world would be completely changed, they would be in so much pain and we’re very interdependent so there would be a massive hole in their life if I wasn’t about. So I can imagine that if they felt like they were the only ones suffering or feeling the pain of my death and everyone else was just going back to normal then that would make my best friend feel even worse.
As a result, one aspect of suicide postvention within schools can be about seating plans. Since whilst empty chairs can be haunting in classrooms, you don’t want to fill the seat too quickly because it feels like you’re erasing their memory. Therefore, in an effort to limit the pain experienced by the young people when it comes to seating plans is to simply collaborate with the students to design a brief but respectful ceremony to acknowledge the rearranging of the seating plan.
That way you get rid of the haunting empty chair without the young people feeling like you’re dismissing and erasing their dead friend or peer too quickly.
This ceremony can be even more important if a crisis or school counsellor is present because this can be turned into an important opportunity to identify students who need additional mental health support. As well as we need to acknowledge that teachers will be struggling too because they will be grieving too, so the school’s crisis team should be prepared to lead this ceremony if needed.
And I get this point because I had a horrific mental health crisis last night and something I mentioned to my best friend was how badly my Outreach department needs me at times and they would be lost without me. Therefore, if I did kill myself (I wouldn’t), the entire Outreach department at my university would be grieving because I’ve worked with them for so many years and I am an important member of the team, as well as the staff in the School of Psychology would be grieving, because they all know me, enjoy talking to me and I would be missed.
Schools Should Talk To Their Young People About Suicide
Over the past few years, largely because of my own mental health I’ve done a lot of reading on suicide and its associated research and one of the most consistent suicide myths is that talking to people about suicide will increase suicide risk. It will not, even with young people (O’Connor, 2023; Joiner, 2010). If you ask about suicide, you will NOT put the idea in their head unless it was already there. Then by talking to people about suicide, you are giving them a chance to talk about their suicidality and it is that chance to talk, find solutions and find reasons to live that are so important.
It is this conversation that saves lives.
Personally, I think one of the main reasons why I haven’t committed suicide (and why I ultimately never would) is because my best friend allows me to talk about it and they ask me from time to time. Since I am having such a rough 6 weeks so far.
In addition, even if teachers and the school don’t want to talk about suicide, the children will be talking about suicide after experiencing a suicide loss. This “unmanaged” suicide talk can be extremely unhelpful and possibly dangerous because it allows misinformation, myths and terrifying beliefs about suicide to grow and go unchecked within a school community.
One of these myths could be that suicide is impulsive and children might be scared that one day they might just snap and commit suicide. That is a terrifying idea. In reality, suicides are always planned days, weeks or even months in advance, sometimes down to the very last detail.
Ultimately, as much as schools and teachers might want to shut down any suicide-related conversations, this is not going to happen. The world is to interconnected and if children do not feel like they can have these conversations safely at school then they will happen outside of school. Be it in their friendship groups or online, and all the dangers that come from chatting with strangers online. As well as Abrutyn et al. (2020) demonstrated that if we shut down these conversations then adults risk alienating young people, increasing the confusion and emotional pain they experience and we could increase their vulnerability to suicidality.
That is the exact opposite of what we want.
Schools Need To Focus On Authentically Caring For Students
Words are extremely powerful during mental health crises and during postvention work, what a school or mental health professional say to young people has a massive impact on them and their own mental health. As a result, it is highly recommended that whatever schools say to their children, they need to make sure it is authentic as well as teachers need to be honest and open with students. Schools need to listen to what the students say they need and schools absolutely have to take the concerns of their students seriously.
Students need to be heard during this extremely painful time.
Moreover, there will be times during these hard, emotional and painful conversations that teachers simply cannot meet the needs of their students, and that will happen at times. Yet it is critical that teachers and schools help students understand what their concerns are so the students don’t take this inability to meet their needs as the school not caring for them.
That only ends badly.
Clinical Psychology Conclusion: Schools Need To Plan Ahead For Suicide Loss
Absolutely no one wants to think, plan or even talk about suicide loss. I know that for teachers, lecturers and school staff (let alone school children themselves) their students are part of their lives. Students are not just numbers on a spreadsheet. They are great people that make teachers smile, laugh and have thought-provoking and inspiring conversations that will ultimately change lives for the better.
Therefore, the very thought that one of these brilliant students, even if they're shy and quiet in the back of the class or loud, disruptive and “annoying”, could be lost to suicide. That is too much for any teacher to bear.
This thinking is a mistake.
Due to the best way we have to make sure that students are supported in suicide postvention work so students have an authentically caring experience, is to plan ahead. If you want to find out more about how to do this planning ahead then you might want to draw inspiration from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s “After A Suicide: A Toolkit For Schools” and a book called “Suicide In Schools”. Both resources contain valuable guidelines on dealing with a school suicide loss.
To wrap up this clinical psychology podcast episode, I want to conclude by saying that no one ever wants to commit suicide. They seriously don’t. For example, since my mental health died about 6-weeks ago, I have been suicidal but I haven’t wanted to kill myself. It is just there have been times that I haven’t been able to see another way out of my situation except suicide.
Therefore, we need to continue focusing on the mental health support of suicidal people so there are no more suicide losses. This is why I am extremely grateful to my best friend and my rape counsellor because they have both shown me there are other ways out and I am still bad most days but there is a sense of hope in my life now.
Hope is all you need.
Nonetheless, whenever the worse does matter and someone does feel like suicide is the only way out. We absolutely have to make sure postvention work is done effectively so we can minimize as much emotional pain as possible and so suicide clusters do not happen.
Schools, teachers and everyone in society owe schoolchildren that much at the very least.
I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode.
If you want to learn more, please check out:
Suicide Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
Have a great day.
Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading
Abrutyn, S., Mueller, A. S., & Osborne, M. (2020). Rekeying Cultural Scripts for Youth Suicide: How Social Networks Facilitate Suicide Diffusion and Suicide Clusters Following Exposure to Suicide. Society and Mental Health, 10(2), 112-135. https://doi.org/10.1177/2156869319834063
Aluri, J., Haddad, J. M., Parke, S., Schwartz, V., Joshi, S. V., Menon, M., & Conrad, R. C. (2023). Responding to suicide in school communities: an examination of postvention guidance from expert recommendations and empirical studies. Current psychiatry reports, 25(8), 345-356.
Epstein, S., Roberts, E., Sedgwick, R., Polling, C., Finning, K., Ford, T., ... & Downs, J. (2020). School absenteeism as a risk factor for self-harm and suicidal ideation in children and adolescents: a systematic review and meta-analysis. European child & adolescent psychiatry, 29, 1175-1194.
Exner-Cortens, D., Baker, E., Gray, S., Fernandez Conde, C., Rivera, R. R., Van Bavel, M., ... & Arnold, P. D. (2021). School-based suicide risk assessment using eHealth for youth: Systematic scoping review. JMIR mental health, 8(9), e29454.
https://theconversation.com/is-suicide-contagious-46434
Isumi, A., Doi, S., Yamaoka, Y., Takahashi, K., & Fujiwara, T. (2020). Do suicide rates in children and adolescents change during school closure in Japan? The acute effect of the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic on child and adolescent mental health. Child abuse & neglect, 110, 104680.
Ivey-Stephenson, A. Z. (2020). Suicidal ideation and behaviors among high school students—youth risk behavior survey, United States, 2019. MMWR supplements, 69.
Joiner, T. (2010). Myths about suicide. Harvard University Press.
Life under Pressure By Anna S. Mueller and Seth Abrutyn (2024)
O’Connor, R. (2021). When it is darkest: Why people die by suicide and what we can do to prevent it. Random House.
Suicide In Schools By Erbacher et al. (2023)
Williams, D. Y., Wexler, L., & Mueller, A. S. (2022). Suicide postvention in schools: what evidence supports our current national recommendations?. School social work journal, 46(2), 23-69.
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