Leadership and Just Culture

A patient's death by suicide in health and behavioral healthcare organizations can have a significant impact on family members, other patients, and staff. It may be even more destabilizing or demoralizing in systems where significant changes to improve suicide care had been implemented.

Health and behavioral health care (HBH) organizations and providers implementing suicide prevention practices often have concerns about liability and legal issues.

In a trauma-informed approach, a behavioral health organization understands and develops a framework to best serve clients with histories of trauma. The system, and all employees in the system, understands the role that trauma can play in each person’s care and recovery.

David Covington, Co-lead of the Zero Suicide Advisory Group, discusses the need to move suicide prevention to a central focus in behavioral health care.

Becky Stoll, Vice President for Crisis and Disaster Management at Centerstone, and Virna Little, Senior Vice President—Psychosocial Services at the Institute for Family Health, describe their respective strategies for involving leadership in a Zero Suicide initiative.

Mike Hogan, Co-chair of the Zero Suicide Advisory Group, talks about applying the core concepts of the patient safety movement to prevent suicide.

The Zero Suicide Organizational Self-Study is designed to allow your organization to assess what elements of suicide safer care it currently has in place.

Wondering how to get started with Zero Suicide in your organization? This resource outlines 10 steps to getting started.

What is Zero Suicide? Transforming Systems is a two-page, printable PDF that describes the Zero Suicide approach and provides a brief history of the initiative.

This letter can be used and adapted to request that staff complete the Zero Suicide Workforce Survey. It should be sent from the chief executive officer, or someone else in a position of leadership, to all staff members.