About SPNAC

Franklin Cook, SPNAC editor and publisher, walking between Sturgis and Fort Meade, S.D., in the AFSP-Black Hills Out of the Darkness Walk on Oct. 17, 2009.

Suicide Prevention News and Comment’s mission is to help communities keep up-to-date on developments in the fields of suicide prevention and suicide grief support. The website is intended to be a reader-focused resource, featuring news and information from across the United States and Canada (some posts reference stories of interest from elsewhere that are published in English). It is designed in the style of a newspaper (front-page stories in columns) and is presented in a blog format so readers can view all of SPNAC’s posts in the archives and post comments themselves if they’d like to. SPNAC’s editor posts headlined items to the website, which are chosen and presented based on editorial guidelines that delineate standards for newsworthiness, objectivity and point of view, practical implications and safety, inclusiveness, and literary merit.

SPNAC readers may post a comment by clicking on the “Comment” link at the bottom of a headlined item and providing a valid email address. SPNAC reserves the right to determine whether to publish a comment or not: If a comment is edited by SPNAC, [edited portions will be noted within bracketed text, like this]. This policy on comments is not intended to be exclusive: It is designed to encourage conversations in keeping with the quality of SPNAC’s content and the purpose underlying SPNAC’s editorial mission.

SPNAC is an independent blog, edited and published by Franklin Cook, a long-time suicide prevention advocate and suicide grief outreach worker. He operates Unified Community Solutions, a public health consultancy that provides leadership, technical assistance, and training throughout the United States to improve services to survivors of suicide loss (a survivor of suicide loss is any person who has been deeply affected by the suicide of someone with whom he or she is in a close relationship).

You may follow Franklin and SPNAC on Twitter (if you’d like to, you can read more about Twitter).

You can read a short bio of Franklin on the website of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, where he serves on the Consumer Survivor Subcommittee. Franklin’s father, Joseph, died of suicide in November 1978. He spoke about his father’s death, how a survivor support group helped him, and some of his views on suicide grief in a 30-minute talk during the 10th annual National Survivors of Suicide Day event on Nov. 22, 2008 in Rapid City, S.D.

Here is a photo of Franklin’s family in September 1978:

[The abridged URL for this page is http://tinyurl.com/SPNAC-about .]