Supporting Survivors, Strengthening Prevention
Losses That Moved Our Community
Our postvention work was borne out of heartbreak. Arizona’s veteran and military community experienced two devastating suicide losses of individuals who had spent years helping other veterans. Their tragic loss reached families, colleagues, volunteers, and the wider veteran community across Arizona. These losses also brought to the surface a gap in our upstream suicide prevention approach: Arizona needed a clearer, more coordinated way to support people after a suicide loss.
From Grief to Shared Purpose
These experiences became a turning point. Partners across the state agreed: Arizona needed a resource built with intention, clarity, and compassion. And everyone needed to speak the same postvention language. That shared commitment became the Be Connected Community Guide to Postvention, a tool created for Arizona’s military, veteran, and family community.
Built for Arizona
Arizona is home to more than half a million service members, veterans, and their families, living across cities, small towns, tribal communities, and rural areas. That diversity required a resource that reflects how Arizona actually works, through partnerships, relationships, and an ecosystem that reaches into every county.
Unified Approach
As Nicola Winkel explained, one of the team’s goals was “to have a unified postvention message across our partners” so that helpers, organizations, and communities statewide shared a consistent foundation. Arizona’s existing ecosystem, built across five domains of people, helpers, organizations, communities, and systems, created the perfect landscape for a resource that connects the dots for anyone supporting someone after a suicide loss.
But the team also wanted to go further. Arizona envisioned a guide that could be used proactively to educate, and practically in moments of crisis. The result is a resource that doesn’t overwhelm, doesn’t assume prior knowledge, and doesn’t leave people guessing about what to do next.
Inside the Guide
The Be Connected Community Guide to Postvention is designed to be useful in real situations. It includes:
- Plain-language on postvention and how early support can reduce future suicide risk
- Guidance for the first 30 days with practical next steps
- Support for helpers, including simple reminders about self-care and community care
- Direction for organizations, including communication considerations and cultural awareness
Thoughtfully Crafted By Partners
The guide was created through a hands-on, collaborative process that brought partners together to identify gaps, shape content, and refine every section with help from Arizona’s mortality review team and national postvention experts. By reviewing poster-sized pages side by side, the team ensured the final version was practical, trauma-informed, and easy for anyone to use.
The guide is not just a document, it’s a product of Arizona’s collaborative infrastructure and commitment to shared responsibility. As Nicola shared, “We really made every attempt to be as thoughtful as possible about how we put it together and to pay as much attention to details as we could so that it could be the best possible resource for our community.”
While we created the Be Connected Community Guide to Postvention to meet the needs of Arizona’s military and veteran community, the approach, structure, and clarity are relevant for every state. Our experience yielded lessons that include:
- How to embrace postvention as part of upstream prevention
- A statewide, collaborative model for trauma-informed, practical, and compassionate support
- A roadmap for state-level coordination across agencies and communities
- Rallying each organization’s resources, ideas, and strengths around a common postvention message
States looking to strengthen their own postvention infrastructure can learn from Arizona’s process, adapt the structure, and build their own localized versions.
Support, Connection, and Care
Arizona created the Be Connected Community Guide to Postvention because our community deserved something supportive and helpful to reach for in the hardest moments. This guide is a reflection of who we are, a network of people and partners here to support people who have been affected by a suicide loss.
It stands as a reminder that healing is something we build together. When a loss reverberates through a family, a workplace, a unit, or a community, Arizona now has a shared way to respond: with compassion, clarity, and connection. And while we hope this guide is never needed, we take comfort in knowing it is there, ready to help.
Support After Suicide Loss: Postvention for Service Members, Veterans, and their Families
How can communities respond after a suicide loss? This SAMHSA SMVF TA Center webinar, held November 4, 2025, offers guidance and tools to support Service members, Veterans, and their Families.
Support Resources
The Arizona Coalition for Military Families and the Be Connected program offer connection to resources for people, families, organizations, and communities affected by the suicide of a service member or veteran.
- For life-threatening emergencies, call 9-8-8, which is a 24/7 crisis line. Press 1 for veteran-specific support services.
- For connection to support resources, call the Be Connected Support Line at 866-4AZ-VETS (866-429-8387) Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. MT.
- For a personalized plan, complete this form, and our Postvention team will reach out.
- Download a free digital copy of the Be Connected Community Guide to Postvention.
- Request print copies of the Be Connected Community Guide to Postvention to share at ConnectVeterans.org/Order
- Get answers to the most frequently asked questions about our no-cost postvention support at ConnectVeterans.org/Postvention.
- Reach our trained team directly at prevention@arizonacoalition.org.
- Consider attending a no-cost workshop or bringing our workshop to your location.
