Florida School Toolkit for K-12 Educators to Prevent Suicide

- Contribute to a suicide prevention effort in the community. - Develop living memorials, such as student assistance programs, that address risk factors in local youth. • Prohibiting all memorials is problematic. - Recognize the challenge of striking a balance between needs of distraught students and fulfilling the primary purpose of education. - Meet with students and be creative and compassionate. - Spontaneous memorials at school should be left in place until after the funeral. - Avoid holding funeral services on school grounds. - Schools may hold supervised gatherings such as candlelight memorials - Monitor student gatherings off campus. - Student newspaper coverage should follow media reporting guidelines available at afsp.org . • Yearbook and graduation dedication or tributes should all be treated the same regardless of the cause of death for the student (Tools 25 and 26). • Grieving friends and family should be discouraged from dedicating a school event and guided instead towards promoting suicide prevention. • Permanent memorials on campus are discouraged because schools need to memorialize all students the same way regardless of the cause of death. If a precedent has been set for planting a tree on campus, then it should be continued. School districts are encouraged to develop a districtwide memorialization policy. 13. A ddress social media. • Create a social media manager to assist the Public Information Officer (Tool 12). • Use students as “cultural brokers” to help faculty and staff members understand what social media platforms are currently most used by students. • Train students in gatekeeper roles, and specifically identify what suicide risk looks like when communicated via social media. • Have staff members monitor social networks and provide safe messaging when important (this may require that districts not completely block these networks). Safe messaging (Tools 25 and 26) stresses that suicide is preventable and largely the result of mental illness and that evidence-based treatments exist for mental illness. • Encourage parents to monitor their child’s social media. • Use social media to post prevention messages, information about crisis support lines, and community mental health resources with the key message that suicide is preventable. • Direct parents and students to the suicide prevention information on the district website (Tool 29). • Give students specific and helpful preventative language to include on social media. • Work with YouTube and Facebook to take down messages with disturbing images or language. • Report concerns or issues with content to Facebook. • Most adolescents get news from social media. Adolescents play a key role in the dissemination of information after a suicide. • We are learning that emotions can be spread by social media. 37