A Grief Resource Library

It's ok to feel angry, to be confused, to be shattered, to feel enormous guilt. All of this is normal in coping with the loss of a loved one to suicide. You can find resources specific to children coping with suicide loss in the above Children Resources section. 

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Crisis Connections will send a book and care package and offer support if you share your mailing address. They can also match with you with peer survivors who have walked the path of similar losses.

The book Crisis Connections sends survivors is called: After Suicide Loss: Coping With Your Grief by Jack Jordan Ph.D. & Bob Baugher Ph.D.

Excerpts: 

Be aware that when people are acutely suicidal, they are almost always in an altered state of consciousness, and their thinking and emotions are not normal. 

We need to make every effort to provide effective help to anyone who is suicidal. But society also needs to recognize that not every suicide can be prevented, in spite of our best efforts.

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It follows that if suicide is the perfect storm of the wrong things happening, then perhaps we can say that suicide prevention is the perfect rainbow of the right things happening. The individual who is suicidal must communicate their distress and intentions in some recognizable way - unfortunately, this is often done obliquely, making statements like "I won't be a burden much longer." Then, the people around the suicidal individual must recognize and react appropriately to the warning signs that someone is contemplating a suicide attempt. After that, the necessary support and professional services must be readily available, not just for the immediate crisis, but to provide longer term follow-up so that the distressed individual receives the competent care that is necessary. 

Unfortunately, there is considerable evidence that suicidal individuals are often "under-treated" for their psychiatric disorders, social distress, and suicidality — the mental health care system in the United States is frequently deficient in the quantity and quality of services that it provides for suicidal individuals. 

And lastly, the person who is suicidal has to be able to hold on to the part of themselves that wants to live. We know that most people who take their life are ambivalent about dying, but they have reached a point where they perceive that all of their other options have been exhausted, and that only suicide can solve their problems and resolve their distress. Thus, when all of the elements in the "perfect rainbow" of protective conditions are present, then suicide can indeed be prevented. Tragically, this does not happen often enough. Suicide prevention efforts in our country must be improved so that help is available when and where people need it, and the public understands and responds appropriately to distress signals from someone who is thinking of ending their life.

So, could the suicide of your loved one have been prevented? 

We know that this question often haunts many survivors for a long time. What we can tell you is that while some suicides can be prevented, it is rarely within the power of just one person to prevent a suicide - instead, it takes the collective efforts of mental health professionals, family and friends, and yes, the suicidal person themselves, to keep it from happening. Come back to this fact again and again as you work to understand the suicide of your loved one. 

Video: Click here: What to do with the "What Ifs" by David Kessler 

Grief expert David Kessler writes in Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief (note: he means meaning in your life, not the loss):

“One of the first things I say to such people is that when someone is intent on harming themselves, we may be powerless to prevent it. We should always try, but we cannot blame ourselves after the fact. Suicide is often an impulsive act, undertaken in a moment of despair. It can happen after years of psychotherapy, antidepressants, hospitalizations, and even shock therapy. Several recent celebrity deaths have driven that point home.

Still, our mind defaults to the if-onlys. My friend Vivian called me recently after her seventy-year-old father died by suicide. An untreated alcoholic, he had been threatening to do it for years, and it seemed inevitable that someday he would. But Vivian couldn't stop thinking, "If only I had gone to his house that day," "If only I'd made him see another doctor," "If only I'd intervened in his alcoholism." 

Such thoughts are a product of guilt, but they are also the mind's way of trying to assert control in an uncontrollable situation that has already happened.

Death by suicide is not a selfish act or even a choice. It's a sign of a mind that needs help. It's a horrific outcome to a tragic situation. We know from countless people who have survived a suicide attempt that they weren't looking to die.

They felt they just couldn't continue to live in so much pain.

Some suicides are driven by external circumstances--people are in overwhelming debt or they've lost the person they most loved or they have a serious chronic illness, or legal issues or substance abuse problems. But many who died by suicide lived lives that can only be described as ideal, at least from the outside. They had families and friends who loved them, plenty of money, beautiful homes, professional success, yet they were tormented. Why? I think that for those of us without suicidal tendencies, it is almost impossible to imagine what it's like for those who do have them. Clinical depression itself is a serious illness, which can lead to suicide.

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Just as we know too little about what causes suicide, our knowledge of how to prevent it is also limited. People say to me, "No, no, you don't understand. I helped him once and I should have been there to do it again," or "I actually could've prevented it if only I'd known." I share the following reality with them:

Consider This

New hospitals are being built with mental health units designed by specialized architects and firms. Among the most crucial considerations in the construction of these facilities is how to prevent death by suicide. Enormous amounts of thought have gone into the design of everything from the doors and even the door hinges to the bathroom fixtures, the lighting, the cabinets and drawers, and the windows with shatter-resistant glass. Once the hospitals are built, they are staffed by psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, and technicians trained to prevent death by suicide. And yet, despite all the care taken with design, the specialized staffing, the inspections of all personal items, the constant surveillance that deprives patients of their privacy, a few people in these institutions will still die by suicide.

I gently tell those who are still feeling so much guilt, replaying their if-onlys, "Maybe you could've done something in that moment, but if they were intent on ending their lives, if their minds were in that much pain, you have to understand that they would have found another moment when you weren't there." They need to stop blaming themselves—and stop blaming the person who died."

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Excerpt from an article by Rachel Zimmerman:

"The vast majority of suicides involve people with some manner of mental illness; major depression, bipolar or substance-abuse disorder is often at play. Sometimes, there’s no clear-cut diagnosis, just a deep psychological conflict that turns deadly. My husband was never diagnosed with any serious mental illness, but I am sure that illness — possibly undiagnosed bipolar, certainly escalating anxiety and depression he’d masterfully hidden — was the cause of his death. 

Daniel Brenner, a Cambridge-based psychiatrist and psychoanalyst (and a high school classmate of mine) told me that self-harm, sometimes irreversible, can be a “symptom” of this type of disease. “It’s not anyone’s choice,” Brenner said. “It’s outside the realm of choice, like a fatal heart attack.”  He added: “There are behaviors that look like choices that don't take into account how biologically determined they are.” 

Moreover, he said, suicide remains so incomprehensible, there’s a tendency to view it as a personal failure, the ultimate selfish act, a refusal to fight for life. “It’s kind of like saying someone in a burning building is a failure because they jumped," he said. "We’re talking about a kind of suffering that is, for the most part, outside the realm of anyone else’s experience.”

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So much remains a mystery inside a person's heart and mind. 

When your mind is trying so hard to make sense of it all, or replay things, or want things to be different, sometimes you can only remind yourself to come back to the present and remember how much isn't yours to know.

Excerpts from A River Runs Through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean:

"Help," he said, "is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly."

"So it is," he said, "that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don't know what part to give or maybe we don't like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted.  And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed...But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding."

Video: Thich Nhat Hanh on how to deal with suicide in a family.

988 is for you, too.

You can call, text, or chat with 988, the crisis line. 988 is not only for those in crisis. But if you are in crisis, please reach out.

"Whether you're facing mental health struggles, emotional distress, alcohol or drug use concerns, or just need someone to talk to, our caring counselors are here for you. You are not alone."