The short video Firefighters Coping with the Aftermath of Suicide takes an intimate look at how suicide affects firefighters, both because they respond to suicide attempts and fatalities and because suicide strikes among their own ranks.

Please share the video with your local fire department (here's the short URL: youtu.be/QSH5EbNhJBA) and encourage firefighters to watch it (it's 11 minutes long).

In the video, Gretta Flatt, a firefighter with South Metro Fire Rescue near Denver, Colo., tells the story of a horrific suicide she and fellow firefighters responded to that triggered distress in her from a long career responding to traumatic incidents:

This is a prime example where I was not aware of how that would affect me personally. This particular call ... is really a hotbed .. I am at the latter part of my career, so it's like things are showing up out of the blue, and I have read about that, but it can really happen.

The special report "Systems Must Include Three Levels of Care for Aftermath of Suicide" (available to read or download below) is essential reading for anyone involved in developing, implementing, or assessing services designed to help people who have been affected by a suicide fatality, such as first responders, mental health practitioners, and the suicide bereaved.

Based on recently released national guidelines,* the report delineates three levels of care:
   • Immediate response: crisis assistance, triage and referral, follow-up
   • Support: assistance with grief and loss, self-help
   • Treatment: interventions for potentially debilitating conditions

Quoting Goal 6 of the guidelines -- which is to "ensure that people exposed to a suicide receive essential and appropriate information" -- the report explains that providing such information is a goal that applies across all three levels of care. It also features an addendum, "Information for People Exposed to a Suicide" that outlines the kinds of information that are valuable to people exposed to a suicide and points to the online resource directory available at bit.ly/afterasuicide.

"Determining how a particular individual might be categorized would not be linked to the person's designation, role, or relationship in reference to the deceased. Rather, each person's reaction to the death would determine the category into which he or she would be classified."

This means that most suicide victims are found by family members or may have had family members who witnessed the death. Relating to those who were close to the victim of a suicide may be one of the most challenging duties that any officer faces, yet few officers receive any training for this task.