USA Today (11/20, Crutchfield) reports that at a meeting of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee yesterday, senators concluded that “veterans at risk of suicide have to wait too long to get mental health treatment from the Department of Veterans Affairs.” Each day, “about 22 veterans commit suicide…VA records show, and they remain a higher risk of suicide than members of the general population.” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) told representatives of the VA, “We cannot have someone call in for an appointment and have to wait five weeks to get help.”

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— “At-risk veterans need help on suicide, senators say,” Charmaine Crutchfield, USA Today, November 19, 2014.

The Higher Education Mental Health Alliance (HEMHA) has published Postvention: A Guide for Response to Suicide on College Campuses. From its introduction:

This resource is intended for use by colleges and universities that are affected by and/or want to be prepared for campus crises and campus deaths. Suicide postvention efforts address the need for predetermined strategies to effectively and sensitively respond to campus deaths after they occur and also contribute to improved prevention efforts….While our hope is that schools will use this guide to help with planning so that systems are in place to respond, we have tried to make this guide sufficiently concise to be valuable also when a school has not engaged in planning but is faced with a student suicide and needs to rapidly develop and implement a response plan.

The guide specifically looks at facilitating the grieving process, stabilizing environments, reducing negative behaviors, and limiting further suicides through contagion.

Another resource for learning about depression associated with college life is the Maryland Foundation for Psychiatry’s own Love, From Depression site.