Ministry to revisit advice on suicide for schools

But official says the Herald series is not the reason for review

The Ministry of Education i s reviewing official advice to schools on how to handle student suicide, days after the Herald reported widespread concerns from principals.

The decision was announced on Thursday, three days after the publication of a major Herald investigation that found many secondary school principals were confused about what they could tell students about suicide and felt like they weren’t getting enough help from authorities.

The ministry’s announcement came in response to questions from the Herald about a string of problem’s with its official resource kit for schools, called Preventing and Responding to Suicide.

We highlighted that six of the internet links in the resource kit were broken, with one sending schools to a loans company in the South Pacific. We questioned why the ministry was pointing schools towards a programme that was no longer available in New Zealand. And we asked how the resource kit could say there had been an “overall reduction in the rates of suicide in young people” when our analysis found the number of youth suicides has remained almost the same for the past decade.

The ministry said the recent coverage was not the reason for the review.

“We are coming up to the five- year anniversary of the resource kit for schools which i s an appropriate timeframe for us to review the currency of the . . . content,” said Katrina Casey, head of sector enablement and support at the ministry.

She said the broken links noted by the Herald had now been fixed.

Last week, the Herald launched a major series about New Zealand’s shocking youth suicide rate. We canvassed our 507 secondary schools on their suicide policies and found deep- seated frustrations and fears, with almost all of the 235 schools that responded saying they did not think they were allowed to even use the word suicide in classrooms.

New Zealand has the second worst suicide rate among those aged 25 and under in the developed world. It has the worst rate among teens.

The Herald series Break The Silence aims to raise awareness of our suicide rates, start a national conversation about the issue and encourage young people to ask for help.

Asked whether the coverage played any part in the ministry’s decision to review the advice it gives to schools, Casey said it was appropriate to “check in every few years on what’s new” when it comes to researchbased resources like this one.

She said the Government has been working on a new suicide prevention strategy so it was important for the ministry to “ensure our advice and toolkit is consistent with that work as it develops”.

The Herald has been liaising with the Ministry of Education over the content of the resource kit for weeks. There was no previous mention of a review.

This resource was last updated in 2013 after a number of schools complained about the ministry’s previous policy which stated that “all suspected suicides be referred to as sudden deaths”.

The schools felt like this policy gagged them from being able to openly and honestly talk to their students about suicide. The ministry updated the resource kit to allow schools to say the word suicide four years ago, but advised they restrict conversations on this issue and talk more about how students were feeling rather than about suicide.

Silence on suicide has been orthodox in New Zealand since a massive increase in teen suicides in the mid1990s led to experts nudging officials towards international research that found talking about the issue could cause copycat deaths.

In the past 20 years, this copycat concept has been questioned by more progressive researchers who claim the earlier studies were misleading and selective and that talking about suicide will help reduce the stigma that smothers it.

Last July, the Coroners Act was amended to allow New Zealand media to label a self- inflicted death as a “suspected suicide” before a coronial finding is released. Previously, media could only refer to suspected suicides in New Zealand as sudden deaths.

Although the latest version of the ministry’s toolkit allows schools to mention the word suicide, the prewritten script the ministry’s trauma team hands out for teachers to read to students in the wake of a death aims to minimise discussion or “rumours” about suicide, and does not mention why it happens or how to prevent it.

Despite the ministry’s updated policy and the recent legislation change in this area, schools appear to still be confused about what they can say about suicide. Almost all the 235 schools that responded to the Herald said they would not use the word suicide after a student death because they were not allowed to. Two schools that suffered a teen suicide in the past year said they had been advised not to use the word suicide.

As well as reviewing the toolkit, the Ministry of Education said it would contact all schools early next term and reinforce the fact that they are now able to refer to a self- inflicted death as a “suspected suicide”.