The World Health Organisation (WHO) has released new guidance to help communities establish suicide bereavement support groups, recognising their growing role in helping people cope after losing loved ones to suicide.
The resource, Preventing suicide: how to start a suicide bereavement support group, outlines practical steps for creating safe spaces where bereaved individuals can speak openly about their grief. WHO says such groups help break the silence and reduce the persistent stigma surrounding suicide, while also offering information on suicide and the grieving process.
Although support groups are increasingly acknowledged as an important pillar of care, WHO stressed that they should complement, not replace, professional mental health services.
The agency said the new guide forms part of a broader effort to strengthen global suicide prevention, involving governments, health workers, medico-legal officers, educators, social agencies, law enforcers, legislators, statisticians, the media, religious figures, and people with lived experience of suicide or self-harm.
According to WHO, more than 720 000 people die by suicide every year, leaving families, friends, colleagues and entire communities deeply affected.
According to WHO, the same guideline will mitigate the challenges currently being faced in obtaining reliable data to record and classify deaths by suicide.
The tool is primarily designed for medical certifiers and mortality coders, but is also relevant to police officers, forensic doctors, coroners and statisticians involved in death investigations.
It captures robust information through civil registration and vital statistics systems, which help governments understand the scale of the problem and identify key patterns such as age, sex and methods used. The evidence thus informs timely, targeted prevention strategies.