Every school should have a crisis plan that can be executed in the event of a school shooting, suicide, homicide, or other tragedy or disaster.

Who is the designated person to talk to the press? What do students do or where do they go in the event of said crisis? What do you do after to mitigate the fear and provide support for students and faculty? Do you have something to send faculty after a student’s death so they can be there for students and themselves, and know what to say or what to do?

Crisis plans are not new

Back in the days of World War II, teachers were trained to teach kids to crawl under their desks to find shelter from falling debris in the event of an air raid by the enemy.

Many schools have some kind of crisis plan in place today, some more robust than others, and many in response to school shootings.

However, fewer have a crisis plan that includes a student suicide or a commemoration policy for any kind of student or faculty death. Unfortunately, administrators wait until there is a crisis to put a plan in place.

In a single year, we can lose a dozen or more students to a school shooting which is awful and traumatizing for all survivors and entire regions. However, in terms of numbers, we lose many thousands of young people, to suicide per year. And that’s also traumatizing to a school community, raising the risk of suicide for all attendees of that school and that district for many years into the future.

A suicide at a school or district further raises the risk of self-harm, substance misuse, and addiction since grief activates poor coping strategies for managing the emotional pain of loss. A plan of action for how to manage a death by suicide (or a death from overdose) needs to be included in the crisis response.

That’s not to say that we need to dial back prevention plans for school shootings because our measures for preventing them have certainly prevented those tragedies. Gun violence and death is a huge issue in this country.

What I am saying is that given the numbers, why aren’t those crisis plans also including a suicide response plan?

Because emotionally healthy kids perform better and have more resilience when life explodes in their faces.

Any school crisis plan should also include what to do after a death by suicide

As a mental health speaker and consultant, I can’t tell you how important this is.

No one wants to be figuring all that out during a crisis once social media has a grip on it and the press is breathing down your neck for a statement, and parents are pointing fingers. Because it happens at the best of schools.

In the case of suicides, those events activate other students at risk. You do not want a domino effect also known as contagion nor do you want to raise the risk of suicide for students or self-harm behaviors by not addressing the crisis appropriately and allowing for time to grieve. That’s why schools need a crisis plan and a commemoration plan. Those commemoration plans offer a roadmap when emotions are high and it’s hard to think through it all. It offers you something to fall back on when people make unreasonable requests.

After all, a good after-a-suicide protocol (called postvention response) prevents further loss of life like contagion and cohort suicide. Youth populations are more vulnerable to reacting to suicide with a suicide. For students who have already been struggling, a suicide event can be activating.

They may think,

“That person doesn’t have problems anymore. Maybe I should suicide, too. Then all my problems would go away?”

That’s why properly handled postvention or crisis is so important. It prevents further loss of life. Not that it always does but it increases the odds.

Solutions

We’ll start with a K-12 school crisis plan that has much of the structure you need to get started.

PREPaRE is a two-day training by the National Association of School Psychologists for K-12 with both in-person and online curricula, consisting of two complementary workshops. It uses the incident command structure so that if there is anything from a school shooting to a hurricane, there is a structure in place on who does what.

So it means that if there is a student who kills himself or herself at school or a young person who dies two weeks before school starts, or anything in between, there’s a crisis protocol in place so people know what their job is.

There are also a number of dashboard-style tech monitoring software and screenings that can help schools get better oversight of how certain students are doing in the aftermath. Having these in place prior to any tragedy is helpful. But after a tragic event, they can help identify individuals who might be spiraling or catch kids early before they get into the rapids. Because it’s far easier to help someone out of the water when it’s a gentle stream. It’s a lot harder right before the waterfall.

A few mental health tech and screening tools:

• K-12: Gaggle Safety Management for Google (Scans school google files. Mostly used by K-12)
• University: AFSP ISP (AFSP= American Foundation of Suicide Prevention, ISP= Interactive Screening Program.) Through a customized program website/platform, ISP provides a safe and confidential way for individuals to take an anonymous brief screening for stress, depression, and other mental health conditions, and receive a personal response from a program counselor within the mental health services available to them. An online program utilized by mental health services at institutions of higher education, hospitals, and health systems, law enforcement agencies, and workplaces through their Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs).
• K-12: Securly student safety company offers a dashboard monitoring system for student mental health.
• K-12 and university: The Life Purpose Scan tests an individual or a group of students such as particular floor of incoming freshmen and provides revealing results.
• K-12: School Safety Dashboard (k-12) was started by Max Schacter, who lost his son, Alex, at Parkland.
• K-12 and university: Safe & Sound Schools doesn’t offer a monitoring tool but they do offer training on keeping schools as safe spaces.

Often the measures for monitoring student emotional health lowers the risk of school shootings and suicide as well as self-harm and substance misuse. Because students can be identified early and interventions are not as time-consuming and resource-draining as crises.

The approach to minimizing suicide, shootings, and self-harming behaviors is taking a more intentional approach to help our young people build the coping and life skills they need. Because they’re not getting them in face-to-face interactions on the playground like they used to. So don’t eschew SEL (social-emotional learning) as unnecessary, embrace it and understand that those concepts and opportunities can be woven into any school curriculum to change the culture of that university or school. These are not “soft skills” but rather “essential skills” for managing life.

Postvention (after a suicide) downloads and information:

• After a suicide at a school or college. What do you do?
• Grief Talking Points for Faculty/Staff After a Death at Your School/University
• Free evidence-based guide in PDF- Postvention Guide for Colleges – From JED Foundation & Higher Education Mental Health Alliance (HEMHA) Project
• Free evidence-based guide in PDF- After a Suicide: A Toolkit for Schools- Second Edition– From NASP, NASSP, ASCA
• Free PDF- How can student groups respond to a suicide on campus? From Active Minds
• Free Resource Poster: Crisis Textline 8.5″ x 11″ poster for walls
• Helpful guide for creating school policy for suicide prevention
• Website- Reporting on Suicide – Media and online coverage of suicide should be informed by using best practices.
• Should the student who died by suicide be in the yearbook?
• Should a school mention a student at graduation who has died by suicide?

AnneMoss Rogers is a suicide prevention speaker, mental health speaker, trainer and consultant for schools and universities. See suicide prevention training and mental health training options here including customized mental health training for school faculty and staff. CONTACT AnneMoss here.

Emotionally Naked: A Teacher’s Guide to Preventing Suicide and Recognizing Students at Risk by AnneMoss Rogers and Kimberly O’Brien PhD LICSW, through Wiley Publishing, covers memorial policy and postvention recommendations, scripts to talk with parents, how to contain contagion, and cohort suicide. It includes scripts for educators and administrators for the most difficult conversations.

————————-sources of data

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 1991-2021 High School Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data. Available at http://yrbs-explorer.services.cdc.gov/. Accessed on August 1, 2023.
• Hall OT, Trimble C, Garcia S, Entrup P, Deaner M, Teater J. Unintentional Drug overdose mortality in years of life lost among adolescents and young people in the US from 2015 to 2019. JAMA Pediatr. January 31, 2022. Epub ahead of print. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2021.6032
• https://www.uclahealth.org/news/adolescent-drug-overdose-deaths-rose-exponentially-first
• Trends in Drug Overdose Deaths Among US Adolescents, January 2010 to June 2021
• School Shootings in 2021: How Many and Where

AnneMoss Rogers

AnneMoss Rogers is a leading wellness and suicide education expert and one of the top mental health speakers and suicide prevention speakers. Known for her powerful, motivational keynotes, AnneMoss combines her personal story of loss with proven strategies to help organizations build a wellness culture that drives results and saves lives.  She speaks at conferences, workplaces, K-12 schools, and universities, delivering impactful presentations that inspire change and promote mental health awareness.
AnneMoss does this work in memory of her son, Charles, who struggled with anxiety, depression, and addiction, and died by suicide at age 20 in 2015.