Suicide prevention: resources and guidance
Help for local authorities, public healthcare professionals, police forces and others to prevent suicides in their areas.
The Office of Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) supports the cross-governmental strategy for suicide prevention by creating resources for local authorities and healthcare professionals to understand and prevent suicides in their areas or jurisdictions. We do this by working in partnership with the National Suicide Prevention Alliance (NSPA), a cross-sector, England-wide coalition committed to reducing the number of suicides in England and improving support for those bereaved or affected by suicide.
The NSPA works with its members to share knowledge, learning and good practice in suicide prevention and they provide a range of guidance and information.
Support after Suicide Partnership is a special interest group of the NSPA. Its website contains a number of resources including Help is at Hand, and also links to additional support for people who have been affected by suicide.
Help is at Hand
Help is at Hand provides emotional and practical support for people bereaved through suicide or other unexplained death, and for those helping them. Developed by Support after Suicide Partnership, the main authors are people who have themselves been bereaved by suicide.
The guide is designed to be given out by bereavement support organisations and by those who are likely to be first on the scene after a suspected suicide, including police and ambulance staff.
Printed copies of Help is at Hand can be ordered for free on the Health Publications website.
Suicide prevention tools
The suicide prevention profile puts together and presents publicly available data on:
- suicide
- associated prevalence
- risk factors
- service contact among groups at increased risk
This tool allows planners to profile their area and compare to similar populations.
Support after a suicide
Current policy
Previous progress reports
These reports chart progress made against the previous 2012 Suicide prevention strategy for England and 2019 Suicide prevention cross-government workplan, which were superseded by the Suicide prevention strategy for England: 2023 to 2028 published on 11 September 2023.
Updates to this page
Last updated 29 November 2023 + show all updates
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Added 'Suicide prevention strategy for England: 2023 to 2028' to the collection.
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Added a new section called 'Help is at Hand' covering guidance and support around suicide. Updated the page to reflect the transition from PHE to OHID.
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Added Suicide prevention: developing a local action plan to Suicide prevention tools.
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Added 'Suicide prevention: fourth annual report' to the annual reports section and 'Suicide prevention: cross-government plan' to the policy section.
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Added Support after a suicide: a guide to providing local services
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Added preventing suicides in public places: a practice resource.
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First published.