Policy

Introduction

Building strong mental health and suicide prevention policies into the fabric of your company’s operations can reduce the risk of suicide and promote overall health and wellness for your entire workforce. In this section, you will learn about the importance of drafting, updating, and enforcing policies that support employee mental health and prevent suicide risk. You will also cover specific examples of policies that can impact mental health and learn how your company can build better policies to facilitate a positive and healthy work environment.

This lesson is meant to be used as guidance to choose what policies are needed in your workplace or where your company can make improvements in an effort to support employee mental health.

Recommendations

1. Draft a short suicide prevention policy. This can be one sentence or one page, but you want to make it clear that suicide prevention is a priority and taken seriously by your company.
2. Review existing company policies to see where mental health may be affected. Your existing company policies may be a barrier to access or improving the mental health and overall well-being of your employees. Take time to review current policies and determine where improvements can be made.
3. Draft new policy. Consider drafting new policies that support mental health of all employees. Include policies relating to suicide such as responding to a suicide crisis at work or how to handle a suicide death (postvention).

Lesson Topics