Suicide prevention

Hope, help and healing

Suicide is a tragic and all too common outcome of colonization, racism and intergenerational trauma. How do we support those who may be struggling to live a good life? How do we share the collective knowing that life is sacred?

FNHA believes that the best way to prevent suicide is to promote protective factors such as family connectedness and emotional safety. Eliminating suicide requires the concerted effort of our relations.

FNHA has developed resources that we hope will help you and your loved ones prevent suicide.

Hope, Help and Healing: A Planning Toolkit for First Nations and Aboriginal Communities to Prevent and Respond to Suicide (FNHA toolkit)

FNHA developed this toolkit for community health leads and workers in First Nations and Aboriginal communities and others working in an area that touches on preventing and responding to suicide in their community.

The toolkit aims to support the planning and development of a community suicide prevention, intervention and postvention plan that can be used in communities.

The toolkit is organized into four sections and includes several appendices:

you can use the four sections in order or separately, depending on the work being done in the community
your community may want to focus on suicide prevention (Hope), planning for intervention (Help) or “postvention” (Healing) resources
you can use the toolkit as a checklist to see if your community has some of the “promising practices” in place already