Therapeutic Risk Management: Suicide Postvention

When considering critical elements involved in suicide prevention, dialogs are often dominated by suicide assessment, management, and intervention themes. Proactive consideration on what to do if a patient dies by suicide is often overlooked, which can be especially detrimental to our practice and those we serve. In this article, we extend the philosophy of the therapeutic risk management model to consider ways in which we can take good care of the extended community of suicide loss survivors, including providers. We begin by briefly describing the widespread impact of suicide loss and the lack of suicide postvention education and awareness. Given the increased likelihood that providers will be touched by suicide loss, we then provide recommendations and resources to assist the provider in developing and/or enhancing suicide postvention practices.