The goals of the Postvention Taskforce of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) are to increase awareness of postvention and survivor issues. One of the strategies is to organize meetings. We report on the 1st International Suicide Postvention Seminar, held as a 1-day preevent at the 11th European Symposium on Suicide and Suicidal Behavior in Portoroz, Slovenia, September 2006. The seminar provided a state of the art review of the postvention field, with plenary presentations on research, psychotherapeutic care, development of national networks, and of postvention materials. We summarize the presentations below.

Der Suizid eines nahen Angehörigen stellt für die Hinterbliebenen ein massives psychisches Trauma dar, das zu suizidalen Krisen führen kann. Hinterbliebene stellen so ihrerseits selbst eine Risikopopulation für einen Suizid dar. Nachfolgend wird zunächst die schwierige Lebenssituation, mit der Hinterbliebene zu kämpfen haben, vor allem aus Sicht der Praxis beschrieben. Im zweiten Teil werden spezielle Hilfsangebote diskutiert und der Bereich der Selbsthilfe anhand der Organisation «Angehörige um Suizid (AGUS) e.V.» dargestellt.

Postvention is the term used to describe a package of interventions designed for people affected by suicide. Inpatient suicides in Departments of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry are rare, but nevertheless constitute an immense burden to family members, friends, and fellow patients, as well as to medical staff members. Besides including an effective management of the acute crisis situation with well-defined communication rules, appropriate interaction with the bereaved, and prevention of copycat suicides in other patients, reliable guidelines for dealing with inpatient suicide must also contain a precise procedure on how to handle mental stress in physicians, psychotherapists, and other staff members. Furthermore, postvention should be an important part of the professional training of physicians as well as psychotherapists who work in child and adolescent psychiatry departments or outpatient clinics.

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