Joanne Harpel is President of Coping After Suicide, LLC, an international authority on suicide bereavement and postvention response. She is certified in Thanatology (death, dying, and bereavement) and has over 20 years’ experience addressing the questions, emotions, and complexities that arise in the aftermath of suicide. Harpel’s full-service practice includes working directly with grieving individuals, couples, and families, facilitating national and international suicide bereavement support groups, advising educational institutions, workplaces, and faith communities, training mental health clinicians, health care professionals, clergy, funeral directors, first responders, and educators, and frequent appearances as an invited presenter and media guest. Harpel’s work has been recognized with the two most prestigious awards available in the field: the American Association of Suicidology’s Survivor of the Year Award and the International Association for Suicide Prevention’s Farberow Award. Over two decades she’s collaborated with hundreds of organizations, including the NIMH, WHO, Columbia University Schools of Social Work and Journalism, the University of Melbourne, HBO, and Sesame Street.
