headspace National Youth Mental Health Foundation
headspace National Youth Mental Health Foundation provides early intervention mental health services to 12-25-year-olds with the goal of supporting all young people in Australia to be mentally healthy and engaged in their communities
Each year, headspace provides close to 100,000 young people and their families vital support through our 163 headspace centres, our online and phone counselling service eheadspace, our Work and Study services, and our presence in schools and communities.
Much of the work headspace does around suicide prevention and postvention is carried out by our headspace Schools & Communities division.
This dedicated team operate right around Australia, partnering with primary and secondary schools, government agencies, universities, sports clubs and other organisations to build the mental health literacy, and help-seeking skills of young people, families and communities.
Our programs and initiatives are designed to support mental health and wellbeing through evidence-based mental health promotion, prevention, early intervention and postvention services. This includes specialist programs for the professionals who work directly with young people and their families.
When communities experience a death by suicide, critical incident or are identified as being at high risk, headspace plays a vital role in delivering targeted support within those communities.
Be You Initiative
Be You is the national mental health and wellbeing initiative in education, delivered by Beyond Blue in collaboration with Early Childhood Australia and headspace. As a proud Be You partner, headspace works alongside more than 7,500 participating Australian schools to support educators and school leaders to implement whole of school approaches to mental health and wellbeing.
Be You differs from other wellbeing initiatives in schools, in that it has a national team of Consultants based in every state and territory who connect with participating schools, providing key support to guide educators through embedding a whole-school approach to mental health and wellbeing. This support is fully funded and provided at no cost to learning communities.
A key aspect of the initiative is the facilitation of prevention and postvention support for schools, which includes the delivery of Postvention Planning Workshops, to ensure that schools are prepared to respond effectively, and to mitigate risk, should a suicide death occur. Be You also provides response and recovery support for communities that have been impacted by a suicide death, increased suicide risk, or a critical incident. Be You Consultants’ work stretches from the period of initial response through to the longer term recovery. Be You’s Suicide Postvention toolkit is used in schools all over Australia and provides schools with a framework to mitigate risk when they are faced with responding to a death by suicide.
Be You also offers professional learning through online modules, as well as the delivery of online events. The Be You website has a range of resources and fact sheets to support educators wanting to build their mental health literacy or support wellbeing in their setting.
Mental Health Education Program
Schools play an important role in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of young people and their family and friends. Workshops delivered by the Mental Health Education Program are designed for secondary students, their families and their friends to build mental health awareness, knowledge and skills. In person and online workshops are interactive, strength-based, evidence-informed and timed to fit a standard school lesson.
University Support Program
The University Support Program provides training and education opportunities to Australian universities with the objective of building mentally healthy communities, by building their capacity and confidence to engage in conversations about mental health and wellbeing, and to respond to critical incidents. Core service offerings include:
- Postvention response and support to assist in responding to a death by suicide including development of a postvention plan, and support with response and recovery activities;
- Policy and framework review to help embed a whole of university approach to mental health and suicide postvention; and
- Executive briefing for university leaders to highlight the importance of a whole of university approach to suicide postvention and the role headspace can play.
headspace Community Suicide Postvention
When a suicide death, natural disaster or large-scale critical incident occurs the impacts can be felt community wide. The headspace National Collaborative Community Suicide Postvention Model supports key community agencies, services, professionals, and leaders to come together for a collaborative, rapid, effective and compassionate whole-of-community response.
Research has shown that a coordinated and timely response to current and emerging risk reduces community distress. In partnership with national and local government and community organisations, an experienced team of consultants, subject matter experts and clinical leaders at headspace can provide a coordinated approach to support vulnerable communities experiencing current and emerging risk.
Since the development of the model in 2015 several hundred communities have worked with headspace across Australia to put in place collaborative, community-led protocols and response strategies. These have included ways to foster closer relationships between stakeholders, measures to encourage the sharing of knowledge and resources, region-specific actions to reduce risk of exposure and activities to instil a sense of community connection and hope.
National Postvention Leadership Group
Alongside StandBy Support After Suicide, Thirrili, and Mackillop Family Services, headspace Schools & Communities is a partner of the National Postvention Leadership Group, established in 2024 to facilitate collaboration among national postvention services, ensuring timely and accessible postvention support for individuals and communities impacted by suicide.
While ensuring alignment to national policy and strategy, and connection to Suicide Prevention Australia, the group works together to:
- improve service navigation and coordination of postvention support for local communities;
- respond to emerging needs with a national yet locally relevant approach; and
- strengthen the cultural appropriateness and capability of postvention services.
Over the coming years, this group will be developed further to consider the growing postvention sector across Australia.
