Psychoeducation Tools 

and Best Practice Guidelines

Psychoeducation and Resources for Youth and their Families

Local Resources

Suicide Prevention and Intervention Best Practice Guidelines

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), in collaboration with experts from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), created this Blueprint for Youth Suicide Prevention as an educational resource to support pediatric health clinicians and other health professionals in identifying strategies to support youth at risk for suicide.

With this specific guide, SAMHSA’s goal is to inform healthcare professionals, healthcare system administrators, teachers and school administrators, parents, community members, policy makers, and others of the strategies for treating suicidal ideation, self-harm, and suicide attempts among youth.

The table includes Treatments and Brief Interventions for Suicide-Specific Care. The foundational belief of Zero Suicide is that suicide deaths for individuals under care within health and behavioral health systems are preventable. It presents both a bold goal and an aspirational challenge.

This toolkit represents a select group of strategies based on the best available evidence to help communities and states sharpen their focus on prevention activities with the greatest potential to prevent suicide.

Youth Suicide Prevention and Intervention offers a comprehensive review of current research on the public health crisis and best practices to prevent youth suicide.  It includes 18 chapters organized into five sections on:

The purpose of this guide is to help family members become aware of how to recognize the warning signs and risk factors of suicide so that they will be able to identify these signs in youth and provide support.

This Toolkit has been created to help schools comply with and implement the Pupil Suicide Prevention Policy. This was created in response to a need for schools to address student mental and emotional wellness to prevent suicide and, in particular, how to respond after a suicide loss.

The purpose of this guide is to support American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities and those who serve them in developing effective, culturally appropriate suicide prevention and intervention plans.

This manual describes a brief clinical intervention, safety planning, that can serve as adjunct to risk assessment and may be used with clients who have made a suicide attempt, have suicide ideation, have psychiatric disorders that increase suicide risk, or who at high risk for suicide.