In this episode of Never the Same, Dr. Tony Pisani sits down with Jonathan Singer, a social work professor at Loyola University, co-author of Suicide in Schools, and past president of the American Association of Suicidology. 

Jonathan is also the creator of The Social Work Podcast, which he started in 2007 while teaching as a doctoral student. He thought “25 people would listen,” but by the end of the semester, there had been over 3000 downloads, from 80 countries.

They explore how jazz improvisation shaped Jonathan’s approach to therapy and collaboration, why schools with fewer suicides pay attention to “weak signals,” and what postvention can look like after a student suicide death.

Guest Bio

Jonathan Singer is a social work professor at Loyola University and the co-author of Suicide in Schools. He is the past president of the American Association of Suicidology. Jonathan is also the host and creator of the Social Work Podcast.

Referenced Resources 

• The Social Work Podcast
• Suicide in Schools: A Practitioner’s Guide to Multi-level Prevention, Assessment, Intervention, and Postvention  
• Suicide Contagion Explainer 
• Universal Suicide Risk Screening in Schools: Outcomes from 9 Years of Implementation
• Life Under Pressure: The Social Roots of Youth Suicide 
• Cook County real-time suicide data dashboard
• Johns Hopkins COVID dashboard