Preventing Suicide Contagion
NOTE: Communities for Youth is not a postvention organization, but we understand when a crisis strikes, the need for information and resources is high. We thus do our best to provide research-based information and resources to additional organizations that specialize more in this type of work.
Suicide contagion can be a tricky concept, but the main concept is that individuals that know or know of someone who has died by suicide are more likely to attempt suicide. This can (in rare cases) lead to what are referred to as “suicide clusters” or situations where multiple individuals connected by geography, social networks, or other factors die by suicide.
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Preventing suicide contagion is also sometimes referred to as postvention and this form of response is meant to prevent subsequent deaths by suicide after one has taken place within a community. There are many postvention practices from responsible media practices, to identifying populations at high-risk, to school interventions, to interpersonal/family conversations. The resources below primarily focus on what individual youth or parents of youth can do and say within their own social networks or families to help grieve and process loss in ways that prevent future suicides.
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Dougy Center Grief Resources and Toolkits (Main Page)
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American Foundation for Suicide Prevention “Living with Suicide Loss”
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National Suicide Prevention Resource Center “Providing for Immediate and Long-term Postvention”
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Communities for Youth One Pager: Preventing Suicide Contagion Through Social Connection
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Local resources
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Professional mental health counseling through a licensed provider
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Grief counseling or other counseling through your child’s school
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This webpage or any Communities for Youth resource is not meant to take the place of clinical care or other mental health supports. The science of preventing suicide contagion (also called postvention) is not exact, or specific to any child or youth.