The impact of every suicide is far-reaching. Research suggests that, on average, 135 people may be affected when a person takes their life.
Among those affected, parents often experience the deepest and most profound impact. The loss of a child is one of the most distressing events in the life of a parent, and death by suicide can be particularly challenging. Without support, parents may experience pervasive psychological consequences, including complicated grief and serious mental health disorders.
Grieving and Growth
Grieving is a process through which parents can cope with a traumatic loss. Grieving involves experiencing a range of emotions, from anger to sadness, denial and acceptance. It’s a process that helps parents come to terms with their loss, integrate it into their narratives and, ultimately, find ways to continue their lives with meaning and fulfilment, despite the pain they experience.
When parents don’t have the space to grieve, healing processes can be obstructed. Parents can become frozen in their trauma, re-living the same debilitating emotions and cognitive states. Mental health challenges can intensify, and trauma can impact relationships, work, personal aims and other aspects of daily life.
Grieving Processes After Suicide
Different models of grieving following bereavement attempt to describe and explain the process that follows a loss of life, including a suicide. In their dual model of coping with bereavement, Stroebe and Schut speak about the flux between sense-making and meaning-making on the journey towards acceptance.
In the context of a suicide, sense-making often involves finding answers to the question of “why?” and accepting that the suicide has happened. Meaning-making may be a broader process whereby parents can experience some form of post-traumatic growth in response to their loss.
Grieving processes require space and time, and the ability to discover and use healthy coping mechanisms. Parents who have experienced the loss of a child by suicide speak about different adaptive coping strategies, such as celebrating birthdays, keeping a journal or engaging in other rituals to keep their memory alive. Becoming closer to faith and spiritual institutions can help parents accept and find meaning in the loss and connect with a supportive community. Informal support offered by family, friends, or groups can be a transformative resource for people bereaved by suicide and participation in informal groups can be a source of purpose.
When grieving processes are able to move forward, many parents are able not only to make sense of and accept what has happened, but to grow as a person and make positive changes in their lives. Parents have described practising better self-care, leaving stressful jobs and making more time for themselves, becoming closer as a family and experiencing introspective revelations.
Stigma, Grief and Support
Sadly, many parents who lose a child by suicide face social barriers that prevent them from fully grieving their loss. Stigma, judgement, cultural and religious, and even legal implications may take away access to social or professional support. They may also make it harder for parents to engage in important rituals, such as celebrating anniversaries or speaking about their child, keeping their memory alive.
Stigma Surrounding Suicidality
Stigma surrounding suicidal behaviours and suicide is still pervasive in society. Suicide survivors may experience stigma as shame, blame and avoidance. Some bereaved families are held responsible for their loved one’s death by those around them.
For bereaved parents, this can make it harder to speak with others about their experience or reach out for support. They may feel like they can’t be open about how their child died because of the reactions they will face, or find that their usual support networks are unavailable.
Stigma towards suicide survivors has been linked to concealment of the death, social withdrawal, reduced psychological and somatic functioning, and grief difficulties.
Religion and Grief Following Suicide
For some families grieving a suicide, religion is a source of strength and meaning. For others, it brings additional challenges related to judgment, guilt and stigma.
Bereaved parents have spoken about the role of religion in teaching patience or trusting that their experience was, ultimately, part of God’s plan. Others, however, describe the difficulties caused by understanding suicide as a sin, and its impact on their grieving processes.
When religious interpretations understand suicide as sinful, it can profoundly affect the way parents experience grief. As well as impacting their own processes of sense- and meaning-making, it can make parents ashamed to share the cause of their child’s death with others. In communities where religious practices constitute a core form of social support, judgment by religious communities can lead to devastating social and emotional isolation.
Legal Implications Following Suicide
In some countries, cultural stigma is reinforced by legal systems that criminalise suicide and attempted suicide. This legislation only worsens stigma, judgment, stereotypes and social exclusion surrounding suicide and mental health.
It can also consitute further silence families and disrupt their grieving processes. When families are told that a young person has done something wrong, it can make it harder to make sense of their child’s inner experience, empathise and understand what they were going through.
In this context, it’s especially important to avoid using language like ‘commiting’ suicide, that implies and condones the characterisation of suicide as a crime or as wrong-doing.
Stigmatisation by Healthcare Workers
As well as experiencing social isolation and exclusion, people bereaved by suicide may also receive judgment and stigma from healthcare workers whom they turn to for support. They may find that healthcare workers seem unsure how to support them after a suicide and that these relationships also become strained.
The Importance of Storytelling
One key theme of conversations about grief is the importance of storytelling. Because of stigma, judgment and religious and cultural contexts, many parents bereaved by suicide find that they are unable to speak about the loss of their child freely and openly.
This silencing can deny them the opportunity to make sense of their loss, maintain friendships and relationships and celebrate the memory of their loved one. In the context of meaning-making, maintaining connections and revisiting positive times as vital parts of readjustment following loss and protection against complicated grief, the impact may be profound.
Challenging Stigma and Enabling Growth
The task of challenging and overcoming stigma around suicide is a responsibility that falls on all of us. Whether or not we’ve been directly affected by suicide, the way we speak about the topic and the manner through which we respond to others shape the attitudes and social norms of our communities.
It’s important to have open and honest conversations about suicide and mental health, taking care to avoid reproducing harmful stereotypes that characterise people who take their own lives as selfish or weak. Using language such as ‘died by suicide’ rather than ‘committed suicide’ helps to challenge conceptions that suicide is a sin.
We should also stand up against any social shame that’s directed against families or other loved ones of people who have died by suicide. And we should be ready to listen to, welcome and show care towards those in grieving processes, respecting the way that every person chooses to grieve.
The Wave Clinic: Specialist Mental Health Support for Young People and Families
The Wave offers specialist mental health support for adolescents, young adults and families. We focus on the role of interpersonal relations as a foundation of young people’s mental health and well-being. We combine exceptional clinical care with enriching experiences, community projects and educational programs, equipping young people with the skills they need to follow their dreams.
We work with families who have experienced different forms of family trauma, deconstructing the impact of traumatic events on family structures and dynamics. Together, we develop new skills, resolve conflicts, establish boundaries and pursue holistic healing.
If you’re interested in finding out more about our programs, you can get in touch today. We’re here to make a difference.
