Article 13: Trauma-Informed Comprehensive Critical Incident Responses for Officer Suicide Prevention

Correction officers in High Income Countries are at higher risk for suicide than those in almost any other occupation, including other protective service occupations. Suicide prevention for correction officers requires attending to the long-term impacts of violence and suicide exposures on their health and wellbeing. We argue for a two-pronged approach: one that focuses on prevention, through attention to critical incident exposures involving serious violence, injury or death, and comprehensive postvention interventions, following any suicide exposure. Routine peer support and crisis intervention services can begin to normalize self-care and begin to attenuate the stigma surrounding help-seeking that permeates the correctional context. Through implementing a trauma-informed critical incident response approach to officer wellbeing, we hope that officer suicide can be prevented and postvention services may eventually be less necessary.