National Recommendations for Depicting Suicide and Additional Resources

 

Recently, the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention (Action Alliance) released National Recommendations for Depicting Suicide (PDF) in collaboration with Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Entertainment Industries Council. The recommendations, which were informed by both representatives from the entertainment industry and the suicide prevention field, aim to help members of the entertainment industry - content creators, scriptwriters, producers - tell more balanced and authentic stories involving suicide and suicide prevention. These new recommendations come at an important time to campus personnel, faculty, and students who increasingly use video as part of general education and prevention programming across a wide variety of platforms including social media, film, and eLearning. Further, today's students are the future of tomorrow's entertainment industry and establishing new social norms around accurate depictions of suicide and mental illness is an important part of suicide prevention initiatives.

 

The recommendations advance goal 4 in the Action Alliance's National Strategy for Suicide Prevention (PDF), which calls for promoting "accurate portrayals of suicide and mental illnesses in the entertainment industry" and objective 4.2 to "encourage and recognize members of the entertainment industry who follow recommendations regarding the accurate and responsible portrayals of suicide and other related behaviors." 

 

The recommendations include the following:

These guidelines also provide an opportunity to remind the news media about responsible reporting given the recent suicides experienced by the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and Sandy Hook communities. The Action Alliance and its partners released a statement (PDF) encouraging news outlets, which include campus publications, to accurately report on suicide and reduce the risk of suicide contagion. This includes reporting on suicide as a public health issue, seeking advice from suicide prevention experts, not sensationalizing suicide through headlines or other language, and describing suicide as inexplicable or "without warning."

 

For more information on suicide contagion or suicide prevention resources, please refer to these NCCPS articles, " Suicide Contagion: Identifying Those at Risk and Postvention Strategies " and " 13 Reasons Why: Suicide Contagion."

May 2019 Webinar: Campus Threat Assessment, An In-Depth Expert Q&A

 

In response to overwhelming audience requests for more information on campus threat assessment, on Thursday, May 16th at 2:00 PM ET,  Campus Public Safety Online will present  Campus Threat Assessment: An In-Depth Expert Q&A . We welcome back two experts: Marisa Randazzo  (PDF), Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of  SIGMA Threat Management Associates, LLC  and international expert on threat assessment, targeted violence, and violence prevention; and  Jeffrey J. Nolan, J.D. , attorney with  Dinse P.C.  and nationally known for his practice in threat assessment, Title IX, the Clery Act, and FERPA.

 

This special 90-minute Q&A session is an opportunity for registered participants to submit questions and hear answers on campus threat assessment issues. The deadline for those wishing to submit questions in advance is  Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at 1:00 PM ET .  You are encouraged to submit questions about threat assessment-related issues such as:

 

 

Questions can be submitted when you complete the registration process. Please note, not all submitted questions will be selected for use during the webinar. Additional questions and comments from the live audience will also be addressed during the webinar.

 

This webinar is appropriate for professionals in campus public safety and law enforcement, student affairs, counseling / EAP, human resources, emergency management, risk management, general counsel and any other employees involved with their campus threat assessment team.

 

For more information and to register, please visit our website .

April is Alcohol Awareness Month

"Help for Today, Hope for Tomorrow"  is the theme of this year's Alcohol Awareness Month , a national grassroots effort observed each April by campuses and communities to support prevention, research, education, intervention, treatment, and recovery from alcoholism and alcohol-related problems. The 2019 theme is designed to help reduce the stigma often associated with alcohol addiction and to highlight the reality that help is available and recovery is possible. Colleges and universities can use the social media kit (PDF) and Organizer's Guide (PDF) to access media strategies and plan awareness campaigns, programs, and events for their communities - see page 19 of the guide for a list of suggested activities for colleges.

 

After being sponsored by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD) for 32 years, Alcohol Awareness Month is now sponsored by Facing Addiction with NCADD , an organization formed in 2018 from the merger between NCADD and Facing Addiction. Facing Addiction with NCADD is a nonprofit organization that works to bring together the resources necessary   to reduce the human and social costs of addiction until this public health crisis is eliminated. Positioned in communities across the country, Facing Addiction with NCADD and its network of local affiliates are available to provide direct help and assistance to individuals and families. Those interested in finding support services can visit their website and search for the type of help they are looking for - counseling, health and wellness, housing, legal, prevention, recovery, research and policy, schools, treatment - and then view the U.S. map to identify nearby resources. Colleges and universities wishing to add their resources to the map along with other schools who have already added to the growing network can do so online .

 

Effective programming can contribute to decreased rates of substance misuse on campus. One of the tools available to the higher education community is the CollegeAIM alcohol intervention matrix, developed by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to help college personnel choose wisely among the many potential interventions to address harmful and underage college student drinking.

 

For more information on alcohol and drug misuse prevention and recovery, visit the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Drug Misuse Prevention and Recovery website.

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