School Crisis Recovery and Renewal

As of June 1, 2025, SCRR is no longer funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration or a National Child Traumatic Stress Network Category II site. Learn more

School Suicide Postvention x Recovery and Renewal
Embracing and Expanding Postvention in / for Our Schools

This page hosts materials related to school suicide postvention + recovery and renewal: how have, do or might school leaders go beyond suicide response into the aftermath?

The resources provided are sourced from the field, participants in our SCRR Postvention Communities of Practice, and SCRR staff.

If you have a resource you would like to add to this page, please submit it here.

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Quick Links to Key Sections on this Page

NEW RESOURCE! Leading with Courage, Care, & Connection: A Reflection Guide for School Leaders Navigating Recovery & Renewal After Student Deaths by Suicide (2024)

Through several SCRR workgroups and communities of practice, we explored the essential grappled with current gaps in school suicide postvention practice and policy. This guide is a “conversation capture” of dialogues and communities of practice and seeks to add clarity and context for future conversations in the field.

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Resource List: School Suicide Postvention + Recovery and Renewal

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Resources from and for our Community of Practice

A collaborative and conversational space to build the field’s capacity to hold ourselves and each other after death by suicide in our school communities with equity and liberation at the forefront.

This community of practice is a collaborative & brave space for school based or connected practitioners from across the country to come together to share insights, be present together and develop strategies and tools to share with your own networks relating to school suicide postvention, collective care, and healing.

2024-2025 Community of Practice: “Liberated School Suicide Postvention Study & Inquiry Series”

In this iteration of our community of practice, we want to engage in shared meaning-making by holding space for lived experiences and reviewing research and articles from experts in the field. This series is designed to hold conversations and co-create resources for liberated school suicide postvention policy and practice.

We will use a “Socratic style” conversation to facilitate rich discussion, two of our sessions will be dialogue driven by lived experiences of school support staff navigating postvention from a liberated lens; and two sessions will center on a critical reflection around current research. 

Materials

Key text for Socratic Seminars – “Leading with Courage, Care, & Connection: A Reflection Guide for School Leaders Navigating Recovery & Renewal After Student Deaths by Suicide.”

Session 1 – October 9, 2024 – Text Study

Session 2 – December 4, 2024 – Problem of Practice

Resources shared during our December 4, 2024 session:

Storytelling

Resources to Support Survivors

Tools for Messaging

Mental health practitioners 

Session 3 – February 5, 2025 – Text Study

Session 4 – April 2, 2025 – Problem of Practice

2023-2024 Community of Practice: “Liberated School Suicide Postvention: Workgroups to Create Renewal-Focused Policy and Practice ”

This series is designed to hold conversations and co-create resources for liberated school suicide postvention policy and practice. In examining policy, we will collaborate and reflect on existing policies while ideating and generating policies from a liberatory lens. In exploring practice, we will dig into the basics of school suicide postvention from an on-the-ground framework and hone our skills, knowledge and dispositions.

The result of these conversations and collaboratives was a new resource for SCRR “Leading with Courage, Care, & Connection: A Reflection Guide for School Leaders Navigating Recovery & Renewal After Student Deaths by Suicide.”

2022-2023 Community of Practice: “School-Based Suicide Postvention from a Liberated Lens”

Building on the previous year’s School Suicide Postvention CoP, we are deepening our discourse and discussions by designing our space to hold an explicit focus on liberation and the inclusion of young people in our postvention policies, practices, conversations and decisions.


Each of the four CoP sessions focuses on a different question or need for participants to discuss, ideate and leverage collective wisdom to move conversations and practice forward regarding liberated school postvention. This taps into the post-crisis human need for agency, community and growth, while crafting meaning and learning for ourselves and each other.

Slide decks will be posted below for each session. Recordings will not be posted to respect confidentiality of the Community of Practice to ensure all participants have a common grounding. If you have questions about this Community of Practice, please contact us at SCRR@cars-rp.org

Session 1- October 20, 2022

Session 2- January 19, 2023

Session 3- March 2, 2023

Session 4- May 4, 2023

2021-2022 Community of Practice: “Embracing and Expanding Postvention in / for Our Schools”

Our first year of this Community of Practice ran from September 2021-May 2022, and was open nationally to educators, youth advocates, mental health providers, crisis responders, school site leaders, and school mental health professionals to:

  • Learn about suicide postvention- where the field is now, and where it can go (e.g., what does long term postvention look like? Should it even be called “postvention”?)
  • Approach suicide postvention through grief sensitive, trauma informed, healing centered, and youth-focused work
  • Collaboratively create content (and eventually a training) that could be used to train others that expands postvention beyond the first weeks after a death by suicide (containment) and for longer, more holistic impact (incorporating restorative circles, meaning making, and mourning)
  • Center Black and Indigenous youth postvention needs, innovations, practices
  • Provide an overview of important topics to support trauma-informed and culturally appropriate responses in school communities in suicide aftermath.

Below are posted decks for each session. Recordings will not be posted to respect confidentiality of the Community of Practice, with the exception of Session 1 to ensure all participants have a common grounding.

Community of Practice Materials and Resources

2021 – Session 1: Community of Practice launch (Creating community)

2021 – Session 2: Language: The words we use, the stories we tell (what is postvention? what are language norms about suicide?)

A wonderful gem! Kris Bifulco put this in the chat: “Postvention does not end at the funeral”

2021 – Session 3: Lived experience in practice (Peer Presenter: Kelechi Ubozoh)

  • Postvention and prevention are on a continuum. The way we do postvention, and especially the reflection inherent to Renewal, can inform and improve our prevention.
  • When receiving postvention and prevention support, people need and want to be seen, to be witnessed, and to be acknowledged. 
  • When we are holding space for others, our ability to sit in discomfort can allow people the space they need to feel whatever is happening for them. As listeners, we don’t have to react; instead we can respond without fixing things
  • [On prevention and postvention] “Move beyond coping mechanisms to healing” – Kelechi Ubozoh
  • “It’s time to stop surviving and start thriving, and that is what moving beyond coping to healing can mean for so many.” – Canada Taylor Parker
  • [On getting support with suicidality] “I needed people to believe me” – Kelechi Ubozoh
  • “People have a deeply rooted stereotype of “strong Black women” who can take endless punishment, so when we hurt and say we do, it’s played down in the medical setting and behavioral health settings.” – Canada Taylor Parker on the way the needs of Black women get minimized or dismissed
  • Grief has no time and expanding postvention and prevention to support that is what we are here for.
  • [On the way we expect grief to be time-limited] “Love has no boundary of time or space, and therefore grief never can.” – Canada Taylor Parker

2021 – Session 4: Using restorative circles for school suicide postvention (Peer Presenter: Project Fleur-de-lis)

A huge thank you to Tuyl and John for leading the group through the experience of a circle! We are grateful that folks had the opportunity to connect with each other honestly and vulnerably about postvention work. In lieu of a recording, here are notable quotes and key messages from the session. 

  • “We’ve all been through a lot we don’t understand in a world made to either break us or make us so hard we can’t break even when it’s what we need most to do.” – Tommy Orange, There There
  • “Through the sacred art of pausing, we develop the capacity to stop hiding, to stop running away from our experience. We begin to trust in our natural intelligence, in our naturally wise heart, in our capacity to open to whatever arises.” – Tara Brach
  • “Whatever the problem, community is the answer. How we are together in our relationships is the solution.” -Margaret Wheatley
  • Postvention circles hold space for grief, loss, and the unique components that make suicide loss unqiue. The circles create safety and structure for people to share their experiences. Circles are not training; they are  sitting with people and everyone sharing their own wisdom. 
  • Circles offer spaces for belonging, deep listening, and authentic storytelling. Collectively practicing deep listening is a gift – it is an intervention and a collective settling
  • Many of us are doing postvention work while carrying the stories and grief of loved ones lost to suicide. This can be a heavy, painful and isolating experience. Being witnessed by each other is important. 

If you are interested in leading your own postvention circles, Project Fleur-de-lis has created a guide.

2021 – Session 5: Grief and stigma: How does this impact lived experience? (Peer Presenters: Petra Gutierrez & Amy Castellanos)

Thank you so much, Petra and Amy, for stepping in to lead discussion and share your experiences! And thank you to everyone who joined and shared their own personal experiences and also highlighted the nuances and variety of experiences that people have with suicidality. Here are some takeaway messages from the session. 

  •  While statistical trends are helpful for us to get a big picture of what suicidality can look like for people, it is important to remember that everyone has their own unique experience. 
  • Often the things we are not supposed to talk about are the things we really need to talk about. 
  • Sometimes systems think they are helping or doing someone a favor by exiting someone from services, but that can also mean that people lose access to needed support. When this happens it can also represent people’s unwillingness and discomfort in supporting someone dealing with suicidality or suicide loss. 
  • Living and working as our whole selves (not compartmentalizing) can be very supportive to doing postvention work sustainably .
  • People also shared a number of resources for people with lived experience or who have lost someone to suicide.

2021 – Session 6: Cultural humility and responsiveness: Meeting people where they are (Peer presenters: Adrianne Tennant, Canada Taylor Parker, Fredina Drye-Romero, & Kris Bifulco)

Thank you Fredina, Canada, Adrianne and Kris for sharing your experiences and perspectives with us! We especially appreciate the vulnerability with which you shared and the ways you are pushing us to expand postvention. Here are some of the things we discussed in the session.

Questions we posed to peer presenters: 
  1. How do you integrate cultural humility and responsiveness in your work?
  2. What do you do when suicide stigma is present in the community you are working with?
  3. Suicide postvention goes beyond how we interact with each other and what we do in the community: What responsibility do we and the field have to advocate for postvention policy and data in the context of renewal?
Themes from our panel and discussion
  • Even when we are members of a particular cultural group, we can only speak to our individual experience. We cannot (and can’t ask others) to represent the whole group perspective or experience.
  • As outsiders to a group we are serving, we may feel pressure to “get it right”. That pressure can get in the way of our ability to be curious, flexible and responsive to what specific communities actually need and want during postvention.
  • When discussing suicide, there is often fear and discomfort for those we are working with. Part of our task is to meet people where they’re at, destigmatize talking about grief and death, and support them to be able to have difficult conversations so they can engage with postvention and prevention.
  • It is important to know the history and context of the community you are serving – How has white supremacy historically shown up in and formed those spaces? How is white supremacy still present in those spaces? 
  • We need to hold collective and community loss and push for reparations and repair from years and years of harm.
  • From a data standpoint, the questions we ask and statistics we collect are very important so that we have an accurate understanding of who is at risk for dying by suicide. 
  • There has been a lot of stigmatizing and harmful anti-trans legislative efforts across the U.S. lately, which is likely to increase suicide risk if it’s successful. Part of our work in suicide prevention should to include stopping this legislation. 
Unresolved questions
  • Is there such a thing as false (or purely performative) cultural humility? 
  • How we can still hold the pain of systems / structure responsible for harm (eg. Many native folks dying by suicide is not inevitable but part of a story of collective harm/grief/pain)? How might we hold the both / and (becoming more grief comfortable but also not accepting death disproportionate in our communities)?

2021 – Session 7: Where have we been? Where are we headed? What do we need?

Community of Practice Co-Facilitators

Zeruiah [Zair- roo- eye- uh] Buchanan, Facilitator 2021-2025

Zeruiah Buchanan (she/her), is a doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington. She is a social and legal epidemiologist focusing on mental health liberation, structural oppression, amelioration of policy, and intersectionality praxis. Her former education includes psychology, Africana studies, community health education, epidemiology, and biostatistics. Her previous experience as a Program Counselor at Peninsula Behavioral Health Hospital and a Suicide Prevention Epidemiologist at Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System sparked most of her passion to talk about suicide prevention, postvention, and care. Making a world worth living drives the work that she engages in professionally and personally.

Francesca Osuna, Facilitator 2021-2022

Francesca Osuna (she/her), is currently a Field Coach with the School Crisis Recovery and Renewal (SCRR) Project and joined the project in 2020 through her work with Trauma Transformed, where she focuses on trauma-informed systems and has collaborated with county behavioral health, local school districts, and public health departments, among others. Prior to her work with SCRR, Francesca was a school social worker and was regularly called in to support students dealing with suicidal ideation. Before becoming a social worker, she was a crisis hotline volunteer and  worked under a psychiatric epidemiologist who focuses on suicide prevention.

Brianna Young, Facilitator2022-2025

Brianna Young (she/her), M.Ed., is a Midwest native, currently based in the Bay Area. Her role is a Lead Trainer and Project Specialist with Trauma Transformed, and serves as a Field Coach for the School Crisis Recovery and Renewal project. Having started her professional career as a middle school teacher and instructional coach, Brianna has a particular heart for schools and all the potential they hold. She obtained her Masters of Education from Concordia University, emphasizing Trauma and Resilience in Educational Settings. Brianna dedicates this work to teachers who view their classrooms as healing spaces, and to the students who walk through those doors.