Seeking Public Comments by March 31, 2026, for NASW Standards of Care for Suicide Prevention

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I want to express my gratitude to the task force for developing these standards of care. They are needed.

I look back on my own graduate education in social work and wish I had received more than Washington State's required six hours of mandatory training, which was not much more than a powerpoint slide deck. I confess it did not prepare me to treat suicidal patients. We need to teach new social workers how to work collaboratively and compassionately with suicidal patients. We need more than a cursory review.

I am especially grateful to the taskforce for continuously referring back to our fundamental values as social workers. All too often systems of care become systems of control doing iatrogenic harm, especially to our most vulnerable neighbors. Rooting these standards of care in our values can help prevent unintended harm.

I write to given my urgent support to the passage of these standards. As a CAMS certified clinician and adjunct university instructor, I can attest to the necessity of standards of care, and the desire of student social workers to embrace them.

My hope is that, like a good safety plan, these standards of care are living documents that evolve and grow as we gain new insights into this complex, painful, and stigmatizing behavior.

With gratitude,

William Benjamin Packard, LICSW
Seattle, Washington

The draft standards of care is a comprehensive document. Well done. The section on military and veteran populations was balanced. The population risks associated with identifying as male and/or living in a rural community were a missing component of this report.

I am an LCSW with about 20 years of social work practice experience solely concentrated in the Deep South. The past 13 years of my practice has been focused on work with Service Members, Veterans, and their Families, with an emphasis on preventing suicide among these populations.

Acknowledgment and Endorsement of Proposed Standard
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the task force for their time, dedication, and thoughtful work in developing this standard. Your efforts are truly appreciated and reflect a strong commitment to advancing this important area. Overall, the standard looks excellent, and I am in full agreement with its direction and content. Thank you for your meaningful contributions to this work.

On pg 42, the SP field no longer uses the term Gatekeeper, but rather, Community Members. Also, I would have preferred to see the risk for First Responders included in the Military and Veteran population for their shared norms, values, and comfort level with firearms in particular. Oftentimes, veterans are first responders and vice versa. Instead, they were included in Working Adults. Perhaps in both places? Finally, on pg 36, with clinicians sometimes being loss survivors themselves when losing a client to suicide, an excellent resource for this is the VA Uniting for Suicide Postvention.

Hello! Thank you to the task force for this labor and important work. I am a social worker, director of a 988 crisis center, and participate in in city, county, and state efforts for suicide prevention. I would like to see more emphasis least invasive interventions (the least invasive intervention that is the most effective at keeping someone safe). Social workers have the unique opportunity to educate other service providers, clinicians, and clt facing personnel to confidently talk about suicide and interventions with safety and self-determination as the priority directly without policing folks. Additionally, I did not see any mention of AB988 or 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline as a national support and would appreciate that being plugged as a resource included on all safety plans.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide public comment on the draft NASW Standards of Care for Suicide Prevention. NASW is accepting comments through March 31, 2026, and the association asks commenters to include their professional background.

My name is Dr. Donte T. Boyd, PhD, MSW. I am an Associate Professor of Social Work whose scholarship focuses on suicide prevention, developmental assets, culturally responsive mental health research, and the well-being of Black adolescents and young adults.

Overall, I strongly support this draft. The document is thoughtful, values-driven, and well aligned with social work’s person-in-environment perspective. I especially appreciate that it frames suicide as a social, mental, and public health issue; emphasizes that all social workers across micro, mezzo, and macro settings need core suicide-related competence; and explicitly centers strengths-based, collaborative, and nonstigmatizing practice.

I also appreciate the draft’s alignment with the national six-step standard of care—screening, assessment, collaborative safety planning, counseling on access to lethal means, documentation, and follow-up—and its clear statement that safety planning should be collaborative and grounded in client agency, dignity, and reasons for living.

I offer the following suggestions for strengthening an already strong document:

1. Expand the developmental guidance for youth and emerging adults.
The current section appropriately notes that youth under 24 have unique developmental, social media, family, peer, and school-related vulnerabilities, and that caring adults and social connection are protective. I recommend going further by explicitly naming emerging adulthood as a distinct developmental period within or adjacent to the youth section. Young adults navigating identity development, educational transitions, housing instability, financial stress, relationship changes, and reduced family supervision may present differently than adolescents. More specificity here would improve the standards’ usefulness for practitioners working in schools, colleges, primary care, community mental health, and youth-serving programs.

2. Deepen the guidance on culturally responsive care for Black youth and adults.
I appreciate that the draft explicitly acknowledges racism, discrimination, violence exposure, limited access to health and mental health care, and historical harms as contributors to suicide risk in Black communities, while also naming relationships, racial or ethnic identity, spirituality, and help seeking as protective factors. I encourage NASW to make this section even more actionable by explicitly recommending that social workers assess how racial stressors, discrimination, and structural inequities interact with suicidal distress, and how culturally grounded strengths such as identity, family support, spirituality, and community connection can be incorporated into assessment, safety planning, and follow-up.

3. Strengthen attention to assets and protective factors throughout the standards, not only in the introduction.
The introduction does an excellent job describing protective factors as personal, relational, community-based, and structural, and it notes that strengths-based care should identify both risk and protective factors. I recommend making this expectation more explicit throughout the practice standards themselves. For example, the document could state that screening, assessment, safety planning, and follow-up should routinely include identification of reasons for living, supportive relationships, identity-based strengths, coping assets, cultural strengths, and environmental supports. This would further distinguish social work’s contribution and better align with prevention-oriented practice.

4. Add more explicit guidance for school and youth-serving settings.
Because this public comment page is housed under School Social Work and the standards note the role of social workers in families, schools, organizations, and communities, it would be helpful to add more concrete guidance for school-based practice. This could include collaboration with caregivers, school crisis teams, community providers, and procedures for re-entry, monitoring, and support after disclosure of suicidal ideation or hospitalization. A brief practice note on navigating confidentiality, family engagement, and school coordination would be especially helpful.

5. Consider a stronger emphasis on follow-up and continuity of care across systems.
The six-step framework includes follow-up, which is essential. I encourage NASW to emphasize “warm handoffs,” proactive outreach after acute crises, and coordination across schools, emergency departments, outpatient settings, and community-based services. This is especially important for youth and young adults who often fall through gaps during transitions.

In sum, this is a strong and much-needed document. It clearly communicates that suicide prevention is part of the ethical and professional responsibility of social workers across settings, and it meaningfully centers dignity, collaboration, and person-centered language. With additional specificity regarding emerging adults, culturally responsive assessment of racialized stress, strengths-based protective factors, and school/youth-serving implementation, these standards could become even more powerful and practical for the field.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

Dear NASW-
I am a social worker in practice for over 15 years and my current focus is on the mental health of other social workers. We need to address not only the mental health of social workers but also their suicide rates. There has only been one study from 2004 that looked at the suicide rates of social workers. Yes our clients are important and how we address their suicidal ideation, passive/active suicide attempts but we also need to be addressing the lack information. This is a real gap including how exposure to trauma, and working conditions impact the social worker themself. Research tells us that social workers come to the field with higher rates of anxiety, depression and trauma yet we are not deeply exploring mitigating factors, lack of organizational support as well as how systemic bias impacts the professional too. I hope to see more language around this experience and an acknowledgement of social workers having an experience of passive suicidal ideation through active suicide attempts and even the loss of life when a social worker completes suicide.

Thank you to the task force for the important work involved in developing these proposed standards. Setting a minimum standard of care for suicide prevention across all social work settings is both necessary and long overdue. The integration of ethics, person-in-environment, and the NAASP framework provides a strong foundation.

That said, I want to share a few thoughts based on my professional and personal experience:

1. Limited integration of family systems in practice standards.

While the document highlights the importance of human relationships and support systems, it lacks clear operational guidance on involving family members and caregivers in suicide prevention, intervention, and safety planning. Social work is uniquely rooted in person-in-environment and family systems perspectives, yet the standards remain mostly focused on the individual in practice.

For example, in sections such as assessment and safety planning, family involvement is mentioned but not made a core or mandatory part of care. Considering what we know about protective factors, this seems like a missed opportunity to set social work apart from a purely medical model and to establish clear expectations for ethically and collaboratively engaging caregivers.

2. Insufficient focus on veteran and military family contexts.

Although military and veteran populations are recognized as higher risk groups, the standards do not sufficiently reflect the complexity of these systems, especially the roles of spouses, caregivers, and children.

There is an opportunity to strengthen this section by:
• Addressing family reintegration, caregiver stress, and moral injury within the family system
• Recognizing family members as both protective factors and potential risks.
• Offering guidance on engaging with military culture beyond just the individual service member

3. Lack of clear postvention standards, especially for families.

The document explicitly separates postvention from these standards, noting it requires a different set of guidelines. While I understand the intent, the absence of even minimal postvention expectations, particularly for supporting families bereaved by suicide, is concerning.

From both a clinical and public health perspective, postvention is a form of prevention. Families and children bereaved by suicide face a significantly higher risk, yet there is little guidance available for social workers on:

• Immediate family involvement after a suicide death
• Ongoing grief and trauma support
• Preventing Intergenerational Impact

Even a brief outline of minimum expectations or a reference to upcoming standards would improve continuity of care.
4. Opportunity to more fully operationalize person-in-environment.

The document consistently references person-in-environment as a guiding framework; however, its application remains more conceptual than practical in several sections.

More explicit expectations around:
• Family engagement
• Community-based supports
• System-wide interventions would better align the standards with the core identity of social work practice.

Professional Background
I am an LMSW and have been heavily involved in the military and veteran families space. My work focuses on suicide prevention and postvention, family systems approaches, and supporting caregivers and children impacted by suicide. I am also a Doctor of Social Work student with a research focus on children bereaved by a veteran parent’s suicide.