How we review the work before anyone sees it.
Most creative review asks whether the work is good. In behavioral health, that question comes second.
The first question is whether the work is safe.
Why this exists
Research is clear that certain kinds of public messaging about suicide can increase risk among vulnerable people. Content that describes methods, presents suicide as common or acceptable, or frames it as a response to circumstance has been associated with imitative behavior. Messaging can also fail more quietly, by reinforcing the stereotypes it meant to counter, or by describing a barrier so thoroughly that it deepens it.
This is not a hypothetical concern for the organizations we serve. A county running an overdose prevention campaign, a grantee doing Veteran suicide outreach, a clinic promoting mental health services: each is producing public messaging about the exact subjects where getting it wrong carries a cost measured in people, not performance.
So we built a protocol, we follow it on every behavioral health engagement, and we hand you the record.
The standards we build to
We do not invent our own criteria. We apply the published standards the field has already agreed on.
- The Action Alliance Framework for Successful Messaging
- The research-based framework developed by the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, structured around four components: Strategy, Safety, Positive Narrative, and Guidelines. It governs public messaging in every form, from PSAs and social posts to websites, newsletters, event publicity, and fundraising appeals.
- Suicide Prevention Resource Center guidance
- On safe and effective messaging for public awareness campaigns.
- Recommendations for Reporting on Suicide
- Where campaign work intersects with earned media or press materials.
- SAMHSA person-first language guidance
- For substance use messaging.
- Section 508 and WCAG 2.1 AA
- For accessibility of every delivered asset.
- Plain language standards
- We write to defined readability thresholds. On our federal work we have been contractually held to a minimum Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score of 60 at an eighth-grade reading level or below, and we apply that standard by default.
Where a client operates under its own governing guidance, a VA facility, a state behavioral health authority, a grant’s terms, that guidance supersedes ours and we build to it.
The four stages
- 01
Strategy review, before any concept is written.
Who is the audience, what action do we want, what is the desired outcome, and is the strategy sound before we start making things. Message safety problems are far cheaper to solve here than in an edit bay.
- 02
Concept review, before production.
Every message concept is reviewed against the safety criteria below. Concepts that fail are revised or discarded. Nothing goes into production carrying a known risk.
- 03
Asset review, before release.
Every produced asset is reviewed again. Copy, voiceover, imagery, on-screen text, captions, and calls to action. A concept can pass and its execution still fail, most often in imagery or in a line of ad-libbed interview.
- 04
Participant protection, wherever real people appear.
When we film people talking about their own experience with suicide, trauma, or substance use, interview protocols and release language are reviewed and approved before anyone is asked to sit down. Participants are told what the material is for, how it will be used, and that they may stop.
What we check
- Safety
- No description of method or means. No framing of suicide as a solution, an escape, or a response to a particular circumstance. No presentation of suicidal behavior as common, acceptable, or inevitable. No sensationalized or romanticized treatment. No imagery that depicts or suggests method.
- Effectiveness
- Help-seeking presented as available and effective, with concrete steps for finding it. Crisis and program resources present and correct. Prevention framed as possible, because it is.
- Language
- Person-first throughout. “Died by suicide,” not “committed suicide.” “Person with a substance use disorder,” not language that reduces a person to a condition. No terms that carry moral judgment where clinical description is available.
- Stigma, handled carefully
- This one is counterintuitive and it is where most well-meaning campaigns go wrong. Naming stigma in a public message can reinforce it, because describing a barrier as widespread confirms it as a norm. We focus instead on countering the specific belief that stops the specific action, and on the benefits the audience itself identifies. We talk about what helps, not about what is in the way.
- Accuracy
- Clinical claims traceable to a source. Statistics current and cited. Treatment described the way clinicians describe it.
- Accessibility
- 508 and WCAG conformance. Captions, contrast, alt text, readability threshold met.
What you receive
The review is a deliverable, not an internal process you take on faith.
- A message risk register
- Identifying anything flagged, what standard it was flagged against, and how it was resolved.
- A review record
- Logging each asset, the stage at which it was reviewed, and the outcome.
- A compliance summary
- You can attach to a grant report, an expenditure record, or an audit response.
If your funder or your board asks how the outreach was governed, you should not have to reconstruct the answer. You should be able to hand them a file.
Where our limits are
We think you should know what this protocol is not.
We are a communications firm. We do not provide clinical services, we do not assess or treat anyone, and this protocol is not a substitute for clinical supervision of a program.
Review reduces risk. It does not eliminate it. No protocol can guarantee how any individual will respond to any message.
Where a campaign addresses a population or a clinical question outside our experience, we say so and we recommend bringing in someone who holds that expertise. On our VA behavioral health work, clinical review sat with the medical center, which is exactly where it belonged.
We would rather tell you the boundary than let you assume there isn’t one.
Start a Reach Audit.
The audit includes a message risk register for the outreach you are already running, reviewed against every standard on this page.
Victor Rogers, Founder and President
Reston, Virginia · info@strive3.com