This article was first published on Wonkhe.com on 11th October 2024.
Jo Smith, Professor of Early Intervention (EIP) and Psychosis at the University of Worcester and Simon Merrywest, Director for the Student Experience at the University of Manchester, introduce new guidance on working as a whole community to reduce student suicide.
Today, we launch new guidance to help prevent student suicide in higher education. Collective responsibility, collective action to prevent student suicide sets out practical steps to reduce risk and physical access to means to do harm, and to improve the psychological and emotional environment in which students live, study and work.
The call for collective responsibility and action reflects the breadth of the target readership. Unusually, this guidance aims to take student suicide prevention well beyond student support services and instead positioning it, in the most practical terms, as a whole institution approach.
The content draws on current evidence from research, serious incident reviews and inquest, data and the guidance that has emerged is based on consensus.
It is designed to be accessible and user-friendly, providing advice, examples and checklists that empower a wider range of professional services to be active in suicide prevention.
It takes a village
A strength of this project is valuable input we have had throughout from across all parts of the sector and beyond, via a reference group chaired by Edward Peck, the government’s Student Support Champion. In addition to senior leaders and student support professionals, this group included accommodation services, estates, security, procurement and student representatives.
Looking beyond the higher education sector, we took advice from external bodies such as the British Transport Police, Network Rail, Transport for London and the City of London Corporation. Bereaved families from the LEARN Network brought important lived experience into our discussions.
The guidance has been organised into five priorities:
- Reducing potential lethality & risks on site
- Increase opportunities, skills and capacity for human intervention
- Safety planning and opportunities for help seeking
- Safety and image of high-risk locations
- Serious incident review and local suicide audit
We have identified sixteen areas for action, including removal of or restricting access to a potentially fatal substance or compound, impeding access to high-risk locations, restricting access to chemical stores, and removing potential means such as ligature points in student spaces. We have also touched on educational and social interventions to enhance safety, including online safety and safer prescribing. Going into these in details unlocks opportunities for human intervention that are key to successful suicide prevention.
The guidance offers numerous case examples from higher education institutions across the four nations and beyond, together with examples from organisations from outside the HE sector, and information on new technology and solutions. There are questions and checklists designed for service directors and team leaders to support them to plan and deliver change.
Whole community approach
This is an evidence-based and expert-informed piece of guidance which, if adopted, should help to reduce student suicide. However, it will only be truly effective if senior leaders are prepared to adopt its recommendations and to drive a whole community approach.
This will involve them understanding the principles of the guidance, looking at the organisation and its processes through a suicide prevention lens, and assigning accountabilities accordingly.
This guidance has been a year in the making and complements existing HEI guidance around mental health, suicide prevention and postvention, some of which we have contributed to. It aligns with Department for Education policy and the work of the Higher Education Mental Health Implementation Taskforce, and with national suicide prevention strategies across all four nations.
Our aim throughout has been to offer the best available evidence on the impact of, and most effective approach to, reducing the means of suicide and serious harm.
We have done so in a way that we hope will assist higher education institutions to decide what would work for their community, to help their communities become happier and safer places in which to study, live and work. More than anything else, we hope that this guidance contributes to preventing student suicide and saving lives.
The guidance has been funded by Unite Students and Symplicity, and will be officially launched at University of Manchester on Friday 11 October 2024.
“Our aim is to offer the best available evidence and to consider how it could apply in the varied settings and types of HEI to assist institutions to decide what would work for their community, to help their communities become happier and safer places in which to study, live and work. More than anything else, we hope that this guidance contributes to preventing student suicide and saving lives”
Professor Jo Smith OBE
University of Worcester
The guidance is available to download from the AMOSSHE website:
Guidance:
Smith, J., Merrywest, S., Malpas, D., Cernow-Cooke, T., Shaw, J. (Eds.) (2024) Collective responsibility, collective action to prevent student suicide: Guidance for the higher education sector to reduce risk and restrict access to means of suicide. Symplicity and Unite Students, UK
References:
Universities UK and PAPYRUS (2018) Suicide-safer universities Guidance for universities on preventing suicides.
Universities UK (2020) Step change: mentally healthy universities A strategic framework for a whole university approach to mental health and wellbeing at universities.
Universities UK/Papyrus/Samaritans (2022) How to respond to a student suicide: suicide safer guidance on postvention.
