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Grief
Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying, (2003) by ROBERT KASTENBAUM, KENNETH J. DOKA, JOAN BEDER, REIKO SCHWAB, KENNETH J. DOKA, REIKO SCHWAB, KENNETH J. DOKA, NORMAN L. FARBEROW, MARGARET STROEBE, WOLFGANG STROEBE, HENK SCHUT, LILLIAN M. RANGE
Grief Relief
Grief, mourning, and bereavement are the natural consequences of the death of a loved one. The loss by suicide adds to the problems and difficulties experienced by the survivors in this process. The basic tasks in the relief of the grief that follows include accepting the reality and pain of the loss, adapting to a life in which the deceased is now missing, and relocating the deceased emotionally and moving on with life. The tasks also include detaching the hopes the survivor had of the loved one and developing a new and different relationship with the memories previously held about him or her.
For most survivors medical attention or psychological treatment is not required. Familial, social, and environmental support, along with personal coping mechanisms and passage of time, will bring about recovery. A small percentage of survivors may experience severe reactions that are crippling, persistent, and disruptive for both family and social relationships. When this occurs, professional treatment is in order. A larger percentage of survivors may experience continuing moderate difficulties in adapting to the loss. In such cases, help may be sought through family, friends, special groups (i.e., Compassionate Friends, Widow-to-Widow), peer and professional grief counselors, individual psychotherapy, group therapy, and suicide survivor groups. Individual psychotherapy with a mental health professional would probably include current information on suicide, descriptions of the grief process, efforts to normalize the emotional reactions, discussions of disappointing or irritating social reactions, a determination of the survivor's social network and other sources of support, and an attempt to understand the role of any psychiatric illness that afflicted the decedent. The therapist would especially be alert for any evidence of suicidal thoughts and actions by the survivor or anyone in the family.
A survivor may also find help in group therapy led by a mental health professional. In such groups the process occurs within the context of frank discussion of the emotional problems of each member, with the interaction between the members of the group led by the therapist. Other forms of group treatment have been devised especially for suicide survivors. One is a form of family treatment that consists of sending trained nonprofessional volunteers to a family's home after a suicide to provide counseling and support. Another community provided counseling services by telephone along with visits to the home. In still another community a mental health professional accompanied the coroner's deputy so that support could be offered in the initial shock phase of the survivors' grief. Additional contacts occurred for a period afterward, depending on the needs of the survivors.
Probably the most common method for helping adult survivors of the suicide of a loved one is survivor groups in which all the members are survivors of a suicide. Models may be time-limited or continuous, open-ended or closed; they may be varied or limited in kinship, frequency and length of sessions, fees, and leadership (professional, trained survivor facilitators, or mixtures). The basic objective of the survivors' group is to provide a compassionate forum for discussion of the suicide, its impact on the survivors' lives, expression of emotions unique to suicide grief, negative affect, understanding of the grief process, exposure to alternative models of coping, and provision of mutual comfort and support.
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