Suicide-Safer University: Statement and Action Plan
Suicide is a complex and multi-faceted issue with a devastating impact on individuals, families and communities. At St George’s, suicide is everyone’s business; we are committed to building a supportive and safe community for both students and staff.
I’m pleased to introduce the St George’s Suicide Safer Strategy which sets out our prevention-intervention-postvention approach, and associated action plans for each area. The strategy will help to create a supportive and compassionate environment that fosters good mental health and wellbeing for all.
There is much expertise both here at St George’s and within our neighbouring NHS Trust. Our students get involved via initiatives such as the Blue Light Champions— helping to tackle stigma and to change the conversation around mental health— everyone must play their part for this vital work to succeed.
Our Suicide Safer Strategy is informed by welfare leads here at St George’s, evidence- based practices and expertise from across the Higher Education sector. I hope that you will read it in full and adopt it as your personal priority.
Introduction
1. St George’s University of London is committed to ensuring our university provides a safe environment which considers the health and well-being of students and staff. Within this context we recognise that as a university we must act to minimise suicide and attempted suicides. Any suicide within the university community is a tragedy which affects our staff and students.
2. We aim to take a whole university approach to support students and staff to make the university community safe. This suicide safer strategy supports the joint work and prioritisation of mental health and the welfare of students by the St George’s University of London and the Students Union at the University.
3. Our strategy aims to recognise and raise awareness of suicide, to address how the university may play a role in suicide prevention and to reduce the risk of suicide attempts and deaths by suicide.
Context
4. This strategy should be read in conjunction with the UUK guidance Suicide -Safer Universities (Universities UK and Papyrus, 2021) which contains a great deal of context, information and statistics. There are several links to this guidance throughout these documents for readers to refer to.
5. The Office for Students and Office for National Statistics also provide analysis of HE student suicides in England and Wales which is also useful in our understanding of the subject:
- The number of identified students in higher education who died by suicide between 2016-17 and 2019-20 was 319.
- The rate of deaths by suicide in the higher education student population was 3.9 deaths per 100,000 students between academic year ending 2017 and academic year ending 2020.
- The number of suicides in the higher education population in the 12 months ending July 2020 was 64. This is equivalent to a rate of 3.0 deaths per 100,000 students. This is the lowest rate seen over the last four years, although the small numbers per year make it difficult to identify statistically significant differences
- The rate of suicide for female students was significantly lower than the rate for male students. This was observed when looking at overall student suicides.
- First year undergraduate males had a statistically significantly higher suicide rate at 7.8 deaths per 100,000 students compared with those studying in other years (4.3 deaths per 100,000).
- The suicide rate for male students was 5.6 per 100,000 compared with 19.0 per 100,000 in the general male population. This is a greater difference than is seen in the female population, where the student rate was less than half that of the general population (2.5 per 100,000 compared with 6.0 per 100,000).
- Between the academic year ending 2017 and the academic year ending 2020, higher education students in England and Wales had a significantly lower suicide rate compared with the general population of similar ages.
- The data also shows that the suicide rate among higher education students have decreased over the last four years (academic years ending 2017 to 2020). However, low numbers of suicides per year make it difficult to identify significant differences. See ONS analysis.
Recognising suicide and what we know
6. Suicide is the deliberate act of taking one’s life. Suicidal thoughts are common, and may be the result of being deeply unhappy, but not always be a manifestation of a mental disorder. What we do know is:
- Suicide is a significant cause of death in people under the age of 35.
- A person expressing suicidal thoughts should never be treated as someone attention- seeking, they need support and require care.
- We need to be able to talk about suicide and not stigmatise or criminalise. Talking about suicide or asking someone if they are feeling suicidal does not increase their risk or worsen the situation.
- Suicide can be prevented, and prevention is everyone’s business.
- Suicide risk can be short-term and dependent on situations, and there can be warning signs (behavioural or verbal).
- Postvention to support those affected by and learn from a case of a suicide is important.
Risk factors
7. Suicidal thoughts and behaviours are complex and there is often no single explanation for a person’s death or suicide attempt. We know that the number of students experiencing and disclosing issues related to mental health is increasing. Mental health can affect individuals in terms of their performance, engagement, and life participation. We also know that risk can change and suicidal thoughts can be temporary, which is why intervention it is so important and any individual assessment of risk needs to be kept under review. There are several factors which can increase vulnerability to suicidal behaviours:
- Societal – difficulties accessing or receiving care, access to ways of (attempting) suicide, inappropriate media coverage, stigma associated with mental health, suicidal behaviour or substance abuse which prevents help-seeking
- Community-poverty, experiences of trauma and/or abuse, and experiencing discrimination
- Relationships- loss, conflict breakdown or isolation and lack of support
- Individual-previous suicide behaviours or attempts, self-harm, mental health, financial hardship, substance abuse, family history of suicide
Students
8. Factors which might heighten or indicate risk within the student population in particular include:
- Academic drivers, failure, repeating, workload and assessment
- Finance – debt, cost of living pressures, employment
- Life transitions – moving to university, new peer groups, mental health service transition University Mental Health Charter
- Social media, the internet and irresponsible media reporting can increase risk of suicide
- LGBTQ+ people are at higher risk of suicidal behaviour
Strategy
9. Oversight of this strategy is provided by the Student Support and Welfare Committee. The Strategy is owned by the Dean for Student Welfare and Support and the Academic Registrar.
10. St George’s strategic approach to establishing a suicide safer university falls into three areas and an action plan has been developed to support each of these areas:
- Prevention: building a compassionate community, raising awareness, providing support and training.
- Intervention: establishing teams, roles and systems to raise concerns, assess risk, refer to services and implement intervention.
- Postvention: establishing our response to suicide, supporting those affected, communications and review.
Prevention
The importance of safety and community
11. We know that people who think about suicide may or may not behave in ways that puts their life in danger (suicide behaviours). Those who already engage in self-harming behaviours may be at risk of death or harm, intentionally or unintentionally.
12. As a university we will empower our students and staff to speak openly and safely about their concerns with people who are able to support them. This will include signposting, support, and help.
Intervention
13. As a university we will work with the Student’s Union and external organisations to provide a range of accessible and appropriate support to staff and students who are experiencing suicidal thoughts or behaviours.
14. The University has staff who are trained to provide student support, including: the Counselling Service, Mental Health First Aiders, staff trained to receive disclosures of assault, personal tutors, staff in the Student Services team and the Dean for Welfare and Support. The Welfare Group meets weekly to oversee current student cases.
Referring on
15. We will work with local services to develop relationships and ensure that students receive appropriate professional help where this is necessary.
Sharing information in urgent and emergency situations
16. The university has an emergency contact procedure which enables students to provide contact details of a trusted friend or family member, who may or may not be their next of kin, who the university can contact if we have significant concerns about them. The procedure can be found here.
Training and Support for Staff
17. Training and support available for staff includes Mental Health First Aid, Mental Health Awareness Training (Recognise, Respond, Refer and Record), suicide awareness training and training to receive disclosures of sexual assault. Staff have also been trained on Trauma Informed Investigation of Sexual Assault and we have TRiM trained practitioners who can support staff and students who have experienced trauma . The Student Life Centre can provide students with access to trained staff and will treat enquires with discretion.
Postvention
18. A suicide is a devastating experience for those involved. Suicide postvention includes a series of carefully planned interventions to help those affected by a university suicide. Postvention is a source of psychological support, crisis intervention and other forms of help and support deemed necessary. The aim is to:
- Facilitate processes related to grieving or adjustment
- Stabilise the environment
- Reduce the possibility of negative behaviours
- Limit the risk of further suicides due to contagion
19. The university has the produced Guidance on Postvention following a Student Suicide (see Appendix A), designed to be used in conjunction with the UUK guidance and the university Procedure in the Event of a Student Death.