Full List of Guidelines | Action Alliance Framework for Successful Messaging

Guidelines	Category
10 steps to a more effective nonprofit website This resource from the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) will help you develop a non-profit website that is effective and engaging. It includes a list of the top 10 elements of an effective nonprofit website, as well as examples illustrating each element.	Channels, Websites
2022 Public Perception Survey Results A new 2022 public perception national survey of over 2,000 adults in the U.S. to better understand the public’s beliefs and attitudes about mental health and suicide. The survey, conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention (Action Alliance), American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), and the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC)—builds upon past surveys in 2015, 2018, and 2020. Learn more at SuicidePreventionNow.org.	Presentations, Public Speaking, Social Media, Websites, 988
A guide for speaking publicly about suicides This guide, from the Australian Mindframe project, aims to provide some practical tips on safe ways to discuss suicide publicly, ensuring any risks are managed while also increasing the community understanding of suicide.	Telling Personal Stories, Telling Others’ Stories, Telling Your Own Story
A practitioner's resource guide: Helping families to support their LGBT children This resource guide offers information and resources to help practitioners throughout health and social service systems implement best practices in engaging and helping families and caregivers to support their lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) children. Research has shown that compared to LGBT young adults who reported high levels of family rejection during adolescence were 8.4 times more likely to report having attempted suicide.	Populations, Families-Parents and Caregivers, LGBTQ+, Youth, Goals and Activities, Family Support, Topics, LGBTQ+, Youth
A toolkit for evaluating programs meant to erase the stigma of mental illness This toolkit provides measures to help advocates examine the impact of anti-stigma approaches at the local level. It distinguishes the stigma of mental illness into three groups: public stigma, self-stigma, and label avoidance. The toolkit outlines aims to help advocates evaluate their efforts in an accessible way, while also providing a common language and set of measures for advocates and researchers to discuss measuring stigma change.	Evaluation, Evaluation Planning, Goals and Activities, Stigma Reduction, Settings, Mental Health Care
Adding power to our voices: A framing guide for communicating about injury Includes framing theory, message development techniques and vehicles for explaining public health statistics.	Telling Personal Stories, Telling Others’ Stories, Telling Your Own Story
Are we there yet? A communications evaluation guide This guide from the Communications Network is intended to help nonprofits be more effective in evaluating their communications efforts. It offers solutions in easy-to-use formats to help you prepare your communications upfront and evaluate as you go along.	Evaluation, Evaluation Planning
Best Practices for Online Technologies Developed by industry and mental health experts, this resource offers three levels of response to suicidal ideation or intent ranging from Basic to Advanced.	Channels, Social Media, Websites
CDC Office of the Associate Director for Policy This portal provides information concerning effective prevention and public health policies and interventions, as well as the use of credible evidence of prevention’s impact by policy makers, health care and the business community. It links to the CDC Health Policy Series, a collection of policy briefs designed to provide practical guidance to state and local public health practitioners, highlighting specific opportunities for public health to engage with health care to improve population health. The CDC Policy Process provides a framework which includes domains from problem identification through evaluation.	Settings, Health Care
CDC’s guide to writing for social media This guide, developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was designed to provide guidance to help you write more effectively for different new media channels, including Facebook, Twitter, and mobile phone text messaging.	Channels, Social Media
Communicating to advance the public's health: Workshop summary On September 22, 2014, the Institute of Medicine’s Roundtable on Population Health Improvement held a workshop to discuss some of the science of health communication, audiences, and messaging, and to explore what it will take to generate widespread awareness, acceptance, and action to improve health, including through the entertainment media, the news media, and social media. This report summarizes the presentations and discussion of the workshop.	Channels, Working with News Media, Social Media, Settings, Health Care
Culture and community: Suicide prevention resources for Native Americans in California The document describes culturally relevant resources to plan and engage in suicide prevention programs, discusses safe messaging and social marketing, and illustrates suicide prevention materials from 19 American Indian communities in 11 states. An appendix provides American Indian and Alaska Native sources for materials on topics related to suicide, such as mental health, addiction, and depression. Although the title indicates this is for Californians, it is relevant for all parts of the nation.	Populations, American Indian-Alaska Native
Developing an effective evaluation plan: Setting the course for effective program evaluation The purpose of this workbook is to help public health program managers, administrators, and evaluators develop a joint understanding of what constitutes an evaluation plan, why it is important, and how to develop an effective evaluation plan in the context of the planning process. It is intended to assist in developing an evaluation plan but not to serve as a complete resource on how to implement program evaluation. Rather, it should be used along with other evaluation resources, such as those listed in the resource section of this workbook.
Engaging and empowering aboriginal youth: A toolkit for service providers This tooklit covers understanding and integrating cultural identity, increasing youth engagement, establishing partnerships, and evaluation when developing programs for youth violence prevention. While it focuses on aboriginal populations in Canada, much of the content also applies to youth empowerment initiatives with Native youth in the United States.	Populations, American Indian-Alaska Native, Culture, Culturally Specific Messaging, Topics, Youth
Evaluating communication campaigns Derived in part from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Research and Evaluation Conference in 2007, this resource addresses evaluation of communications campaigns, policy-oriented communications, and advocacy efforts. The report offers information on the principles of evaluation, choosing your evaluation design, and overcoming the particular barriers that can arise with communication evaluation.	Evaluation, Evaluation Planning
Faces and Voices of Recovery These web pages from Faces and Voices of Recovery provide “Recovery Messaging” training to help people in recovery from addiction and their families to speak publicly about their experiences in a way that helps build public support for people getting the help they need to recover. Featured tip sheets and other resources offers guidance on working with the media, outreach to policymakers, public speaking, and other kinds of messaging.	Channels, Working with News Media, Public Speaking, Topics, Recovery, Telling Personal Stories, Telling Others’ Stories, Telling Your Own Story
Guide to choosing and adapting culturally and linguistically competent health promotion materials This resource from the Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development will help you create or adapt materials to ensure they are respectful of the cultural values, beliefs, and practices of the intended audience.	Culture, Adapting Messages or Materials
Impact and value: Telling your program's story The purpose of this workbook is to help public health program administrators understand what a “success story” is, why it is important to tell success stories, and how to develop success stories.	Channels, Working with News Media, Goals and Activities, Promote an Organization or Program, Telling Personal Stories, Telling Others’ Stories, Telling Your Own Story
Lessons in evaluating communications campaigns: Five case studies This paper examines how communication campaigns with different purposes (individual behavior change and policy change) have been evaluated. It offers a discussion of theories of change that can guide evaluation planning, along with five case studies of completed campaign evaluations. Each case study includes lessons learned from the evaluation, and the paper finishes with a set of cross-case-study lessons gleaned from these and other evaluations.	Evaluation, Evaluation Planning
Lifeline online postvention manual The recommendations in this manual detail how to safely memorialize someone who has died by suicide. These guidelines can be applied to online memorials and online messages about the deceased.	Postvention Messaging, Online Postvention Messaging
Making headlines: A guide to engaging the media in suicide prevention in California This guide provides people engaged in suicide prevention with the tools necessary to serve as effective media spokespersons and to generate media coverage in order to create awareness of this important issue. It can help them to understand the needs of the news media as part of an effective media outreach program.	Channels, Working with News Media
Mayors' resource guide on behavioral health issues This guide helps ensure that mayors and municipal leaders have the information they need to address the behavioral health needs of their community’s children, adults, and families by supporting the prevention and treatment of mental illness and recovery from mental illness.	Settings, Mental Health Care
Media guidelines for school administrators who may interact with reporters about youth suicide This brief manual explores how media accounts can actually serve as a suicide prevention tool by: assisting news professionals to report responsibly and accurately; using a media request for information as an opportunity to influence the contents of the story; emphasizing the importance of listing available community resources for individuals at-risk and describing what is being done to promote safety for vulnerable individuals in the aftermath of a suicide; and warning against the aspects of news coverage that may promote copycat suicides.	Populations, Youth, Channels, Working with News Media, Settings, School, Topics, Youth
Misdirections in bullying prevention & response (Video) A 6-minute video, from stopbullying.gov, discusses approaches to avoid in bullying prevention and response, drawing on the best evidence and expert opinion. It cautions against overstating the suicide-bullying relationship and offers messaging guidance for talking about bullying and suicide.	Topics, Bullying
Peer support for mental health: Recent research A list of research articles on the website of the organization Peers for Progress. It includes recent research, review papers, and featured reports.	Goals and Activities, Peer Support
Recommendations for Blogging on Suicide The Recommendations are meant to assist bloggers in blogging about suicide safely, and ultimately maximize the effectiveness of the communicators’ efforts and reduce the risk of harmful effects of unsafe messaging on suicide.	Channels, Blogging
Recommendations for Reporting on Mass Shootings The recommendations address how media covers an incident where a person (or a small group) shoots multiple others in a public setting. The tragedies at Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora and Orlando are examples of mass shootings. These recommendations are not intended to address gang violence or murder suicide (i.e. intimate partner violence).	Channels, Working with News Media
Recommendations for Reporting on Suicide Released in 2011 and updated in 2019, the Recommendations for Reporting on Suicide were developed by leading experts in suicide prevention and in collaboration with several international suicide prevention and public health organizations, schools of journalism, media organizations and key journalists as well as Internet safety experts. The research-based recommendations include suggestions for online media, message boards, bloggers, and “citizen journalists.”	Channels, Working with News Media, Social Media
Relationship between the economy, unemployment and suicide Talking points on the economy, unemployment, and suicide prepared in November 2008. URLs updated in June of 2012.	Settings, Workplace, Topics, Economy and Unemployment
SAMHSA's 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline Webpage The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), as national leads for 988, developed this webpage of resources and information to help states, territories, tribes, mental health and substance use disorder professionals, and others prepare for the July 16, 2022 transition to 988.	Topics, 988
School memorials after suicide: Helpful or harmful? This issue brief draws from the research to provide guidance for responding to suicide in a manner that supports grieving while mitigating contagion.	Postvention Messaging, School-Based Postvention Messaging, Settings, School
Social Media Guidelines for Mental Health Promotion and Suicide Prevention The Entertainment Industries Council’s TEAM Up Social Media Guidelines for Mental Health Promotion and Suicide Prevention provide tips for organizations and individuals communicating about mental health and suicide on social media to reduce stigma, increase help seeking behavior and help prevent suicide.	Channels, Social Media
Special considerations for telling your own story: Best practices for presentations by suicide loss and suicide attempt survivors This document outlines best practices for suicide loss and suicide attempt survivors who are considering sharing their story with the public. The best practices were created by a group of experts in the suicide prevention community and include information on: assessing readiness to speak; considering family reactions and potential social ramifications; resources for safe messaging; speaking to the media; self-care; and other considerations.	Populations, Suicide Attempt Survivors, Channels, Presentations, Telling Personal Stories, Telling Your Own Story
Storytelling for Suicide Prevention Checklist A resource from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (Vibrant Emotional Health), which incorporates recommendations from Vibrant, National Alliance on Mental Illness, Suicide Prevention Resource Center, Suicide Awareness Voices in Education, and Activating Hope website.	Telling Personal Stories, Telling Your Own Story
Suicide and mental illness in the media: A Mindframe resource for the mental health and suicide prevention sectors Part of Australia’s Mindframe National Media initiative, this guide to help people working in suicide prevention and mental health promotion to effectively communicate with the media about suicide, mental health, and mental illness in a way that promotes sensitive and appropriate reporting. The guide includes suggestions for providing information about suicide, as well as general strategies for working with the media.	Channels, Working with News Media
Suicide clusters and contagion: Recognizing and addressing suicide contagion are essential to successful suicide postvention efforts This article describes the problem of contagion and the ways that administrators can act to prevent it by establishing a crisis team, recognizing and monitoring at-risk students, and mobilizing community-wide responses.	Postvention Messaging, General Postvention Messaging, Settings, School
Suicide postvention in the school community These 51 slides discuss considerations for postvention that involve all school personnel. Topics covered include contagion, risk identification, memorialization, and dealing with the media.	Postvention Messaging, School-Based Postvention Messaging, Settings, School
Suicide safe mobile app Equips providers with education and support resources to assess patients’ risk of suicide, communicate effectively with patients and families, determine appropriate next steps, and make referrals to treatment and community resources.
Talking about suicide and LGBT populations A consortium of organizations issued these recommendations to guide both news and social media in safe reporting of suicide events among LGBT populations that may be related to bullying. The recommendations are intended to promote vital, thoughtful public discussion about the issue and prevent contagion associated with sensational language. The Talking About Suicide & LGBT Populations guide is a community-based resource for talking about suicide in ways that minimize contagion risk while at the same time expanding public conversations about the well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, promoting the need for family support and acceptance, and encouraging help-seeking by LGBT people who may be contemplating suicide. In addition to 12 practical recommendations on how to talk about suicide in safe and accurate ways, the guide provides information about suicide contagion, bullying and suicide, talking about suicide in social media, and research findings on suicide. Program Objectives: Those who read the recommendations will learn to: 1.Reduce the use of language in public communications that may increase risk of suicide contagion. 2.Increase the use of language in public communications that fosters an accurate understanding of suicide and its causes. 3.Increase awareness of, and emphasis on, the need to support the well-being of LGBT people.	Populations, LGBTQ+, Topics, LGBTQ+
Tech-savvy communications: A toolkit for nonprofits A product of NPower Seattle and the Seattle nonprofit community, this toolkit is intended to help non-profits use technology to better serve their communities. The toolkit can help you identify your audience, create effective messaging, and evaluate communication tactics. It also offers in-depth guidance on using technology as a tool in effective communications.	Channels, Other Technology
The health communicator’s social media toolkit This toolkit, developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), will help you get started using social media. Learn how to develop governance, develop a social media strategy, and determine which social media channels best meet your communications objectives. The toolkit also provides overviews of popular social media channels, outlining the cost, resources required, and key audience for each.	Channels, Social Media
The health communicator’s social media toolkit This toolkit was designed to provide guidance and to the share lessons learned in more than three years of integrating social media into CDC health communication campaigns, activities and emergency response efforts. The guide includes information on getting started using social media—from developing governance to determining which channels best meet specific communication objectives to creating a social media strategy. There is also information about popular channels that can be incorporated into communications plans, such as blogs, video-sharing sites, mobile applications and RSS feeds. Although intended for a beginner audience, although some viewers with an intermediate level may find parts of the toolkit useful.
Veterans Crisis Line – What is 988? This webpage explores how the nationwide transition to 988 impacts the Veterans Crisis Line, operated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.	Topics, 988
Vibrant and 988 Vibrant Emotional Health, as operational home for 988, developed this webpage of resources and information.	Topics, 988
Youth advocate to advocate for youth: The next transition This guide, which is intended for young people, helps youth focus on advocating for change by telling their stories and working on the transition to adulthood.	Populations, Youth, Topics, Youth, Telling Personal Stories, Telling Your Own Story

10 steps to a more effective nonprofit website

This resource from the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) will help you develop a non-profit website that is effective and engaging. It includes a list of the top 10 elements of an effective nonprofit website, as well as examples illustrating each element.

Channels, Websites

2022 Public Perception Survey Results

A new 2022 public perception national survey of over 2,000 adults in the U.S. to better understand the public’s beliefs and attitudes about mental health and suicide. The survey, conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention (Action Alliance), American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), and the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC)—builds upon past surveys in 2015, 2018, and 2020. Learn more at SuicidePreventionNow.org.

Presentations, Public Speaking, Social Media, Websites, 988

A guide for speaking publicly about suicides

This guide, from the Australian Mindframe project, aims to provide some practical tips on safe ways to discuss suicide publicly, ensuring any risks are managed while also increasing the community understanding of suicide.

Telling Personal Stories, Telling Others’ Stories, Telling Your Own Story

A practitioner's resource guide: Helping families to support their LGBT children

This resource guide offers information and resources to help practitioners throughout health and social service systems implement best practices in engaging and helping families and caregivers to support their lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) children. Research has shown that compared to LGBT young adults who reported high levels of family rejection during adolescence were 8.4 times more likely to report having attempted suicide.

Populations, Families-Parents and Caregivers, LGBTQ+, Youth, Goals and Activities, Family Support, Topics, LGBTQ+, Youth

A toolkit for evaluating programs meant to erase the stigma of mental illness

This toolkit provides measures to help advocates examine the impact of anti-stigma approaches at the local level. It distinguishes the stigma of mental illness into three groups: public stigma, self-stigma, and label avoidance. The toolkit outlines aims to help advocates evaluate their efforts in an accessible way, while also providing a common language and set of measures for advocates and researchers to discuss measuring stigma change.

Evaluation, Evaluation Planning, Goals and Activities, Stigma Reduction, Settings, Mental Health Care

Adding power to our voices: A framing guide for communicating about injury

Includes framing theory, message development techniques and vehicles for explaining public health statistics.

Telling Personal Stories, Telling Others’ Stories, Telling Your Own Story

Are we there yet? A communications evaluation guide

This guide from the Communications Network is intended to help nonprofits be more effective in evaluating their communications efforts. It offers solutions in easy-to-use formats to help you prepare your communications upfront and evaluate as you go along.

Evaluation, Evaluation Planning

Best Practices for Online Technologies

Developed by industry and mental health experts, this resource offers three levels of response to suicidal ideation or intent ranging from Basic to Advanced.

Channels, Social Media, Websites

CDC Office of the Associate Director for Policy

This portal provides information concerning effective prevention and public health policies and interventions, as well as the use of credible evidence of prevention’s impact by policy makers, health care and the business community. It links to the CDC Health Policy Series, a collection of policy briefs designed to provide practical guidance to state and local public health practitioners, highlighting specific opportunities for public health to engage with health care to improve population health. The CDC Policy Process provides a framework which includes domains from problem identification through evaluation.

Settings, Health Care

CDC’s guide to writing for social media

This guide, developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was designed to provide guidance to help you write more effectively for different new media channels, including Facebook, Twitter, and mobile phone text messaging.

Channels, Social Media

Communicating to advance the public's health: Workshop summary

On September 22, 2014, the Institute of Medicine’s Roundtable on Population Health Improvement held a workshop to discuss some of the science of health communication, audiences, and messaging, and to explore what it will take to generate widespread awareness, acceptance, and action to improve health, including through the entertainment media, the news media, and social media. This report summarizes the presentations and discussion of the workshop.

Channels, Working with News Media, Social Media, Settings, Health Care

Culture and community: Suicide prevention resources for Native Americans in California

The document describes culturally relevant resources to plan and engage in suicide prevention programs, discusses safe messaging and social marketing, and illustrates suicide prevention materials from 19 American Indian communities in 11 states. An appendix provides American Indian and Alaska Native sources for materials on topics related to suicide, such as mental health, addiction, and depression. Although the title indicates this is for Californians, it is relevant for all parts of the nation.

Populations, American Indian-Alaska Native

Developing an effective evaluation plan: Setting the course for effective program evaluation

The purpose of this workbook is to help public health program managers, administrators, and evaluators develop a joint understanding of what constitutes an evaluation plan, why it is important, and how to develop an effective evaluation plan in the context of the planning process. It is intended to assist in developing an evaluation plan but not to serve as a complete resource on how to implement program evaluation. Rather, it should be used along with other evaluation resources, such as those listed in the resource section of this workbook.

Engaging and empowering aboriginal youth: A toolkit for service providers

This tooklit covers understanding and integrating cultural identity, increasing youth engagement, establishing partnerships, and evaluation when developing programs for youth violence prevention. While it focuses on aboriginal populations in Canada, much of the content also applies to youth empowerment initiatives with Native youth in the United States.

Populations, American Indian-Alaska Native, Culture, Culturally Specific Messaging, Topics, Youth

Evaluating communication campaigns

Derived in part from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Research and Evaluation Conference in 2007, this resource addresses evaluation of communications campaigns, policy-oriented communications, and advocacy efforts. The report offers information on the principles of evaluation, choosing your evaluation design, and overcoming the particular barriers that can arise with communication evaluation.

Evaluation, Evaluation Planning

Faces and Voices of Recovery

These web pages from Faces and Voices of Recovery provide “Recovery Messaging” training to help people in recovery from addiction and their families to speak publicly about their experiences in a way that helps build public support for people getting the help they need to recover. Featured tip sheets and other resources offers guidance on working with the media, outreach to policymakers, public speaking, and other kinds of messaging.

Channels, Working with News Media, Public Speaking, Topics, Recovery, Telling Personal Stories, Telling Others’ Stories, Telling Your Own Story

Guide to choosing and adapting culturally and linguistically competent health promotion materials

This resource from the Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development will help you create or adapt materials to ensure they are respectful of the cultural values, beliefs, and practices of the intended audience.

Culture, Adapting Messages or Materials

Impact and value: Telling your program's story

The purpose of this workbook is to help public health program administrators understand what a “success story” is, why it is important to tell success stories, and how to develop success stories.

Channels, Working with News Media, Goals and Activities, Promote an Organization or Program, Telling Personal Stories, Telling Others’ Stories, Telling Your Own Story

Lessons in evaluating communications campaigns: Five case studies

This paper examines how communication campaigns with different purposes (individual behavior change and policy change) have been evaluated. It offers a discussion of theories of change that can guide evaluation planning, along with five case studies of completed campaign evaluations. Each case study includes lessons learned from the evaluation, and the paper finishes with a set of cross-case-study lessons gleaned from these and other evaluations.

Evaluation, Evaluation Planning

Lifeline online postvention manual

The recommendations in this manual detail how to safely memorialize someone who has died by suicide. These guidelines can be applied to online memorials and online messages about the deceased.

Postvention Messaging, Online Postvention Messaging

Making headlines: A guide to engaging the media in suicide prevention in California

This guide provides people engaged in suicide prevention with the tools necessary to serve as effective media spokespersons and to generate media coverage in order to create awareness of this important issue. It can help them to understand the needs of the news media as part of an effective media outreach program.

Channels, Working with News Media

Mayors' resource guide on behavioral health issues

This guide helps ensure that mayors and municipal leaders have the information they need to address the behavioral health needs of their community’s children, adults, and families by supporting the prevention and treatment of mental illness and recovery from mental illness.

Settings, Mental Health Care

Media guidelines for school administrators who may interact with reporters about youth suicide

This brief manual explores how media accounts can actually serve as a suicide prevention tool by: assisting news professionals to report responsibly and accurately; using a media request for information as an opportunity to influence the contents of the story; emphasizing the importance of listing available community resources for individuals at-risk and describing what is being done to promote safety for vulnerable individuals in the aftermath of a suicide; and warning against the aspects of news coverage that may promote copycat suicides.

Populations, Youth, Channels, Working with News Media, Settings, School, Topics, Youth

Misdirections in bullying prevention & response (Video)

A 6-minute video, from stopbullying.gov, discusses approaches to avoid in bullying prevention and response, drawing on the best evidence and expert opinion. It cautions against overstating the suicide-bullying relationship and offers messaging guidance for talking about bullying and suicide.

Topics, Bullying

Peer support for mental health: Recent research

A list of research articles on the website of the organization Peers for Progress. It includes recent research, review papers, and featured reports.

Goals and Activities, Peer Support

Recommendations for Blogging on Suicide

The Recommendations are meant to assist bloggers in blogging about suicide safely, and ultimately maximize the effectiveness of the communicators’ efforts and reduce the risk of harmful effects of unsafe messaging on suicide.

Channels, Blogging

Recommendations for Reporting on Mass Shootings

The recommendations address how media covers an incident where a person (or a small group) shoots multiple others in a public setting. The tragedies at Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora and Orlando are examples of mass shootings. These recommendations are not intended to address gang violence or murder suicide (i.e. intimate partner violence).

Channels, Working with News Media

Recommendations for Reporting on Suicide

Released in 2011 and updated in 2019, the Recommendations for Reporting on Suicide were developed by leading experts in suicide prevention and in collaboration with several international suicide prevention and public health organizations, schools of journalism, media organizations and key journalists as well as Internet safety experts. The research-based recommendations include suggestions for online media, message boards, bloggers, and “citizen journalists.”

Channels, Working with News Media, Social Media

Relationship between the economy, unemployment and suicide

Talking points on the economy, unemployment, and suicide prepared in November 2008. URLs updated in June of 2012.

Settings, Workplace, Topics, Economy and Unemployment

SAMHSA's 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline Webpage

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), as national leads for 988, developed this webpage of resources and information to help states, territories, tribes, mental health and substance use disorder professionals, and others prepare for the July 16, 2022 transition to 988.

Topics, 988

School memorials after suicide: Helpful or harmful?

This issue brief draws from the research to provide guidance for responding to suicide in a manner that supports grieving while mitigating contagion.

Postvention Messaging, School-Based Postvention Messaging, Settings, School

Social Media Guidelines for Mental Health Promotion and Suicide Prevention

The Entertainment Industries Council’s TEAM Up Social Media Guidelines for Mental Health Promotion and Suicide Prevention provide tips for organizations and individuals communicating about mental health and suicide on social media to reduce stigma, increase help seeking behavior and help prevent suicide.

Channels, Social Media

Special considerations for telling your own story: Best practices for presentations by suicide loss and suicide attempt survivors

This document outlines best practices for suicide loss and suicide attempt survivors who are considering sharing their story with the public. The best practices were created by a group of experts in the suicide prevention community and include information on: assessing readiness to speak; considering family reactions and potential social ramifications; resources for safe messaging; speaking to the media; self-care; and other considerations.

Populations, Suicide Attempt Survivors, Channels, Presentations, Telling Personal Stories, Telling Your Own Story

Storytelling for Suicide Prevention Checklist

A resource from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (Vibrant Emotional Health), which incorporates recommendations from Vibrant, National Alliance on Mental Illness, Suicide Prevention Resource Center, Suicide Awareness Voices in Education, and Activating Hope website.

Telling Personal Stories, Telling Your Own Story

Suicide and mental illness in the media: A Mindframe resource for the mental health and suicide prevention sectors

Part of Australia’s Mindframe National Media initiative, this guide to help people working in suicide prevention and mental health promotion to effectively communicate with the media about suicide, mental health, and mental illness in a way that promotes sensitive and appropriate reporting. The guide includes suggestions for providing information about suicide, as well as general strategies for working with the media.

Channels, Working with News Media

Suicide clusters and contagion: Recognizing and addressing suicide contagion are essential to successful suicide postvention efforts

This article describes the problem of contagion and the ways that administrators can act to prevent it by establishing a crisis team, recognizing and monitoring at-risk students, and mobilizing community-wide responses.

Postvention Messaging, General Postvention Messaging, Settings, School

Suicide postvention in the school community

These 51 slides discuss considerations for postvention that involve all school personnel. Topics covered include contagion, risk identification, memorialization, and dealing with the media.

Postvention Messaging, School-Based Postvention Messaging, Settings, School

Suicide safe mobile app

Equips providers with education and support resources to assess patients’ risk of suicide, communicate effectively with patients and families, determine appropriate next steps, and make referrals to treatment and community resources.

Talking about suicide and LGBT populations

A consortium of organizations issued these recommendations to guide both news and social media in safe reporting of suicide events among LGBT populations that may be related to bullying. The recommendations are intended to promote vital, thoughtful public discussion about the issue and prevent contagion associated with sensational language. The Talking About Suicide & LGBT Populations guide is a community-based resource for talking about suicide in ways that minimize contagion risk while at the same time expanding public conversations about the well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, promoting the need for family support and acceptance, and encouraging help-seeking by LGBT people who may be contemplating suicide. In addition to 12 practical recommendations on how to talk about suicide in safe and accurate ways, the guide provides information about suicide contagion, bullying and suicide, talking about suicide in social media, and research findings on suicide. Program Objectives: Those who read the recommendations will learn to: 1.Reduce the use of language in public communications that may increase risk of suicide contagion. 2.Increase the use of language in public communications that fosters an accurate understanding of suicide and its causes. 3.Increase awareness of, and emphasis on, the need to support the well-being of LGBT people.

Populations, LGBTQ+, Topics, LGBTQ+

Tech-savvy communications: A toolkit for nonprofits

A product of NPower Seattle and the Seattle nonprofit community, this toolkit is intended to help non-profits use technology to better serve their communities. The toolkit can help you identify your audience, create effective messaging, and evaluate communication tactics. It also offers in-depth guidance on using technology as a tool in effective communications.

Channels, Other Technology

The health communicator’s social media toolkit

This toolkit, developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), will help you get started using social media. Learn how to develop governance, develop a social media strategy, and determine which social media channels best meet your communications objectives. The toolkit also provides overviews of popular social media channels, outlining the cost, resources required, and key audience for each.

Channels, Social Media

The health communicator’s social media toolkit

This toolkit was designed to provide guidance and to the share lessons learned in more than three years of integrating social media into CDC health communication campaigns, activities and emergency response efforts. The guide includes information on getting started using social media—from developing governance to determining which channels best meet specific communication objectives to creating a social media strategy. There is also information about popular channels that can be incorporated into communications plans, such as blogs, video-sharing sites, mobile applications and RSS feeds. Although intended for a beginner audience, although some viewers with an intermediate level may find parts of the toolkit useful.

Stay Informed