• About Student-run Prevention Campaigns • Campaign Examples • ToolKit Workshops • Implementation Forms • Participating Schools • Trevor Simpson Award • Student Voices • For Educators and Administrators • A Principal's Letter

For Educators and Administrators

What Every Teacher Should Know
Teachers play a crucial role in prevention, as they often are the first to notice signs of depression in a student. Our brochure details the signs and steps for helping a student who is at risk of suicidal behavior. Order online from the Department of Health website. Click here for link and directions.

H.E.L.P. Curriculum Training

YSPP has developed a health curriculum to address the issues of stress, depression and suicide.  The curriculum was developed with considerable input from school nurses, health teachers, principals and high school students.

Gatekeeper Training

We also encourage teachers to attend skills-based Gatekeeper Training that covers the risk factors and what to do.

School Administration Crisis Plans
We encourage schools to include a response to suicidal behavior in their crisis plan. The plan should be reviewed annually to ensure it is relevant, and include:

• Updated community referral resource list
• Faculty telephone tree
• District policy/procedure for suicide threat and attempt
• Each semester, school personnel need to identify students with depressed or emotionally uncontrolled behavior, and to determine the appropriate actions to take.

YSPP offers sample plans to school administrators; contact us for more information at info@yspp.org. In addition, ASCD offers "Quick Response: A Step-by-Step Guide to Crisis Management for Principals, Counselors and Teachers," available for purchase through shop.ascd.org or 800-933-2723.

After a suicide
YSPP encourages schools to have postvention guidelines so they may respond appropriately if a youth completes suicide.

We offer specialized training for school personnel to learn how to respond to grieving students: "Kids and Grief: On Bereavement."

It's best to have a postvention plan in place before a death occurs. The American Association of Suicidology offers a complete set of guidelines ($18.) on communicating with a bereaved family, students, parents and the media. The guidelines include a sample letter to parents, a sample fact sheet and approaches to challenging issues which may arise.

For example, bereaved parents do not want the school to reveal the death as a suicide. The guidelines suggest this possible approach:

Brent Peterson, principal of Bainbridge High School, sent this letter to parents in September 2003 after the loss of a student to suicide, and included a letter from parents of another youth. We applaud his efforts to spread the word about signs of depression and steps that youth and others may take to help prevent suicide in their community.

Educators' Awareness Study

In July 2003, YSPP published a study, Awareness of Youth Suicide Issues: A Survey of Selected Middle and High Schools in Washington (pdf, 270k), that may be of interest.