Progress in Postvention A Call to a Focused Future to Support Those Exposed to Suicide

Abstract

<p>In the late 1960s, Edwin Shneidman first focused attention on the needs of those bereaved by suicide and coined the term <i>postvention.</i> To quote him directly from the original 1972 source:</p> <p>We hear a great deal about suicide prevention and interventions. A benign community ought routinely to provide postventive mental health care for the survivor-victims of suicidal deaths. Postvention is prevention for the next decade and for the next generation. Of the three possible (temporal) approaches to mental health crises – prevention, intervention and postvention – in the case of suicide at least, postvention probably represents the largest problem and thus presents the greatest area for potential aid. If there are about 50,000 committed [sic] suicides in the United States every year – not counting the couple million "subintentioned" presently labelled natural, accidental, and homicidal deaths – then there are at least 200,000 survivor-victims created each year whose lives are ever after benighted by that event. (p. x)</p>