Florida School Toolkit for K-12 Educators to Prevent Suicide

A. S uicide Prevention is a Team and Community Effort Schools are encouraged to partner with state and local prevention initiatives to coordinate youth suicide prevention efforts. School personnel such as SMHPs should try to avoid being the only providers of treatment to suicidal students, as students are only in school seven to eight hours a day. It is important to note that Florida SMHPs are spread very thin, with their numbers not meeting the professional- to-student ratio recommended by all relevant professional associations for counselors, psychologists, and social workers. Suicidal students need to receive community-based mental health services in addition to the support being provided at school by SMHPs. The most isolated schools in Florida will find it the most challenging to obtain mental health treatment outside of the school for a suicidal student, but the Suicide Prevention Task Force should work together to find resources for suicidal students, even if the community based services are a significant distance from the school. I t is also important to remember that suicide survivors may need to be referred to community resources as well. Suicide survivors have indicated that they received the most significant help when they participated in grief groups attended only by others who had lost loved ones to suicide; they sometimes felt out of place attending grief groups with participants who had lost loved ones due to other causes. Key school personnel, such as SMHPs, are encouraged to refer grieving students and families to the nearest suicide survivor support group. We have provided Tool 28a and Tool 28b to help school personnel identify and work with mental health services in their community or region before and after the suicide crisis. B. M obile Crisis Teams Should Be Organized Through our interview with key personnel around the state, we became aware of differences with regard to mobile crisis teams utilization in Florida counties, and SMHPs are encouraged to carefully assess and identify the services mobile crisis teams provide in their county. C. T he 988 Mental Health Emergency Number Should Be Used In the future, the 988 mental health emergency number will be an important number for schools to know and share with students and families. The 988 number, which will be implemented nationally but perhaps not until 2022, will work like the 911 number, but will become the go-to number for mental health and suicidal emergencies. SMHPs need to monitor closely when the 988 number becomes available in Florida. KEY PRINCIPLES Florida S.T.E.P.S.