How to Respond to a Student Suicide: A Guide for Universities
Universities UK have created a report named ‘How to Respond to a Student Suicide,’ with help from those working on the frontline of student support, along with leading researchers. There have also been contributions from students, families and charities. The aim of this report is to provide guidance to help to support the work of student service teams and first responders in university or higher education settings in the case of a student suicide. It also aims to help senior leadership roles to learn how to deal with situations compassionately and appropriately.
The report lays out the three step approach of: Preparation and Planning, Responses to a Student Suicide and Reflecting and Learning. It outlines clear postvention principles and writes about important things to have in place, such as, a death response plan, protocol for communicating the news, a postvention team who have been trained specifically and more. It goes into detail about what they recommend a death response plan to consist of - a clearly defined and documented plan of action used in response to the report of a student death that has been agreed in advance by an appropriate and experienced group of staff.
Each death response plan should fit each institution’s aims and context and be sure to be comprehensive and practical so it is easy to navigate for staff. This is very useful to have as many institutions may not know what this plan is and how to put it into place. This report also helps with how to deal with emergency funds, extenuating circumstances and multi-agency groups.
Furthermore, it gives clear and helpful information on responding to a student suicide with information on immediate response, such as how to contact emergency services and put together a ‘Single Source of Truth,’ whilst emphasising the importance of timely and compassionate manners and why this matters. Lastly, this report covers the support that should be provided after and how to review, evaluate and learn from the situation. It discusses the ‘SAFER’ approach, memorials, tributes, incident review and more.
The report suggests a need for a group of trained staff to act as the postvention team who can be brought together immediately following the report of a death of a student. The report also gives guidance on effective support, the use of emergency funds, postvention principles and more.
A student suicide can affect so many people such as friends and family but also other students and members of staff, so there is lots of guidance for many people. You can read the report here.