New practitioner guide promoted

A school suicide plan is not one decision made in a principal’s office. It is four different jobs: prevention before a crisis, assessment when a warning sign appears, intervention during acute risk, and postvention after a suicide affects a school community. (taylorfrancis.com) Jonathan Singer is not just promoting a general mental health title. Loyola University Chicago lists him as a professor of social work, a past president of the American Association of Suicidology, and a coauthor of the second edition of *Suicide in Schools*, published by Routledge in December 2023. (luc.edu) (routledge.com) The reason a school-specific guide exists is simple: students often tell school adults first. The American Academy of Pediatrics says children and adolescents disclose suicidal feelings to trusted people in school settings, and it lists suicide as the second leading cause of death for people ages 10 to 24. (aap.org) (echo-chicago.org) The scale of the problem is not abstract. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that in the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 20.4 percent of high school students had seriously considered attempting suicide and 9.5 percent had attempted suicide. (cdc.gov) That is why the book is built like a manual instead of a theory text. Routledge says its “Suicide in Schools Model” gives step-by-step guidance for screening, assessing and monitoring suicide risk, creating collaborative safety plans, and planning for a student’s reentry after a suicidal crisis. (routledge.com) The last piece, postvention, is the one many outsiders miss. The Suicide Prevention Resource Center’s school toolkit says postvention is not only about grief support after a suicide death; done well, it is also a first line of prevention against suicide contagion among other vulnerable students. (sprc.org) Schools already have outside frameworks for that work, but they are scattered across agencies and toolkits. The National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement publishes separate guidance for responding to a death by suicide and offers consultation and staff training for kindergarten through twelfth grade schools. (schoolcrisiscenter.org 1) (schoolcrisiscenter.org 2) What Singer is pointing district teams toward is one place to put those pieces together. A 360-page school-focused guide that covers prevention, assessment, intervention, and postvention can function like a playbook for training staff, writing protocols, and deciding who does what before the next crisis arrives. (routledge.com)