With survey data collected primarily from peer support group participants, the authors compared stigmatization responses of 462 parents losing children to suicide with 54 other traumatic death survivors and 24 child natural death survivors. Parents who encountered harmful responses and strained relations with family members and non-kin reported heightened grief difficulties. After controlling for time since the death and whether a child's death was traumatic or not, stigmatization continued to be associated with grief difficulties, depression, and suicidal thinking. Suicide survivors reported little differences in stigmatization from other-traumatic-death survivors, a result consistent with other recent studies, suggesting more convergence between these two populations than divergence.
Taken among parents who sustained the loss of a child to suicide this study explores the participation of parents in Internet support groups, comparing their demographic and loss-related characteristics (N = 104) to other parent survivors participating in face-to-face support groups (N = 297). Contrary to expectations that Internet affiliates would be concentrated in under-served rural areas, we found similar levels of urban, suburban, small city and rural residents in both Internet and face-to-face subsamples. Bivariate and multivariate analyses suggested several important factors contributing to interest in Internet grief support including: 24/7 availability and opportunities to invest more time into this type of support group experience. Compared to their face-to-face group counterparts, Internet affiliates experienced greater suicide stigmatization from their families and other associates. Unable to find ready comfort and support from their personal communities, Internet users-and especially highly depressed survivors-sought and obtained valuable help from the Internet support resource.
This comparative survey contrasted 571 parents who lost children to various death causes: 48 to drug-related deaths and overdoses, 462 to suicide, 24 to natural death cases, and 37 to mostly accidental death cases. Groups were compared in terms of grief difficulties, mental health problems, posttraumatic stress, and stigmatization. Results did not show any appreciable differences in these respects between the suicide bereaved parents and those losing children to drug-related deaths. However, when the suicide and drug-related death survivors were specifically contrasted against accidental and natural death loss cases, a consistent pattern emerged showing the former group was consistently more troubled by grief and mental health problems than the latter two sub-groups. These differences remained when controls of time since the loss and gender differences were employed as covariates. These findings suggest that the powerful and intense stigma against drug use and mental illness, shared among the public-at-large, imposes challenges in healing of immense proportion for these parents as they find less compassionate responses from their significant others, following their losses.
OBJECTIVES: This study compared problem gamblers, problem substance users, dual-problem individuals, and persons without these problems in the general population. METHODS: On the basis of computer-assisted telephone interviews of a random sample of Texas adults (n = 6308) standard instruments were used to gauge substance use and gambling problems in the general population. RESULTS: Compared with those having a substance use or gambling problem only, dual-problem individuals were more likely to be young, never-married men, without conventional religious affiliations. There was more dysfunctionality (as evidenced by treatment-seeking and problems with the law) among dual-problem respondents than among those troubled exclusively by gambling or substance use problems. CONCLUSIONS: Screening and treatment for gambling problems should be offered in drug treatment and criminal justice arenas.
This analysis explores associations between differing death circumstances and the course of bereavement among a sample of 540 bereaved parents. Comparisons were made between parents whose children died by suicide (n = 462), those losing children from other traumatic death circumstances (n = 54), and others whose children died from natural causes (n = 24). Results were mixed, showing suicide survivors with more grief difficulties and other mental health problems on some criteria, though most findings showed no substantive differences between these subgroups. Results also showed, in the first years after loss, repeated suicide attempts and prior negative relationships with the decedent were associated with greater grief difficulties. However, as more time passed, all death circumstance differences were overshadowed by the importance of the time span since loss. This data also suggested that between 3 and 5 years usually marks the turning point, when acute grief difficulties accompanying a suicide loss begin to subside.
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