Rising rates of incarceration in the United States and continuing use of the death penalty in over half of the states in the United States signal a need for more involvement of social workers in forensic roles to mitigate unjust sentencing. The National Association of Social Workers has consistently maintained a professional policy stance in opposition to the death penalty and in support for alternative sentencing plans, citing that the death penalty disproportionately impacts communities affected by poverty and communities of color, and is prone to error. The purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of educating social workers to mitigation as a primary role among forensic social workers, with a focus on death penalty mitigation with its critical skills and knowledge. After describing mitigation in death penalty cases, we examine four major social work roles in capital cases that expanded education should cover: (1) mitigation investigation, (2) consulting expert, (3) expert witness, (4) teaching expert. This article also addresses important ethical considerations when working as a member of capital defense teams and provides recommendations for social work graduate curricula to tailor content to better prepare students for capital mitigation practice.

The persistent stigmatization of suicide calls for a careful examination of the thought processes involved in perceptions of suicide. Hence, the present study is the first to apply terror management theory (TMT) and use experimental methods to examine whether reminders of death lead to increased stigma towards suicide and whether self-esteem moderates these stigmatized reactions. Consistent with the predicted effect of the death anxiety and self-esteem hypothesis, findings revealed that, for respondents with low self-esteem, thinking about their own death led to more stigma, less willingness to intervene, and allocated less money to a suicide prevention organization as compared to those who did not think about death. Findings from this study could have important implications for how we understand the psychological underpinnings of stigma and the role of death anxiety in hostile attitudes and decreased altruism – especially for mental health professionals working with individuals affected by suicide.

The Stigma of Suicide Scale (SOSS) is a measure of public attitudes toward suicide decedents, which makes it unique from other scales that measure more general attitudes toward suicide. The aim of this study was to further replicate and extend the reliability and factor structure of the SOSS (both long- and short form) in a sample of individuals directly impacted by suicide. This study also sought to identify factors that impact suicide attitudes unique to this sample. The sample included 312 participants who had personal experience with suicide. Results provided support for the oblique three-factor structure of the SOSS (stigma, isolation/depression, and glorification/normalization), with a superior model fit for the 16-item short form version. Correlates of suicide attitudes among individuals exposed to suicide included perceived relationship closeness to a suicide decedent, experience with both loss and attempt, and the sex of the suicide decedent.