Suicide is the leading cause of death for young people in Australia
As a school, you play a key role in supporting young people who may be thinking about suicide or have been affected by suicide.
The Suicide Prevention and Response resources provide clear, practical and reliable guidance and support to help schools in suicide prevention and response. The resources provide strategies for supporting students, staff, families and the broader community. Specifically, you can use this information to:
• prepare your school community to be ready should a death by suicide occur
• guide your school on how to support a young person at risk of suicide
• guide your school response to a death by suicide and the subsequent recovery for the community.
Suicide can be a confronting issue, and it can even be difficult for schools to know how to respond. Your Be You Consultant can help you to work through the required actions to prepare for, respond to or recover from issues related to suicide.
If you are personally impacted by a suicide or suicide attempt at your school, it's important to seek help. You can find a list of mental health support services and helplines here.
The Suicide Prevention resources will help you to include suicide response actions in your planning and consider what to do if you're worried about someone at risk of suicide.
The Be You Suicide Postvention: Complete Toolkit (PDF, 14.9 MB) helps schools respond to suicide (this response is known as ‘suicide postvention’). You can contact the Be You team directly to access support.