BSI suicide guidelines emphasise emotional needs

The British Standards Institute guidelines on suicide prevention in the workplace – a world first – which have already been written into the UK’s all-party strategy for men’s mental health and suicide prevention, and downloaded over 3,000 times across 60 countries since publication in November, explicitly stress the importance of emotional needs, as described in the human givens framework.

The guidelines state that allowing people to meet psychological needs in healthy ways within organisations significantly contributes to prevention of suicide and willingness to seek help. Needs specified are security, autonomy, community, feeling valued, sense of competence and meaning – all featured in the human givens framework.

We have to thank for this brilliant outcome HG practitioner Ezra Hewing, who, as head of education at Suffolk Mind, was able to participate in the editing panel. He comments, “This is the first standard in the world for workplace suicide prevention and, while it remains to be seen if it will be successfully implemented, the human givens formula for emotional needs will be ‘scattered’, as the document is downloaded and shared by those seeking to address suicide.”

The guidelines stress the importance of organisational culture in enabling and maintaining mental health, offer practical suggestions for creating healthy work cultures and supportive work communities, and offer a blueprint for developing an effective suicide prevention policy. Aimed at organisations of all sizes and sectors, including public bodies, charities, social enterprises, businesses, and commercial enterprises, the full guidelines are free to download and can be accessed here.