Survivors of Suicide Victims Searching for Answers and Ways out of the Crisis

Bereaved by Suicide

“…The literature claims suicide survivors grieve differently and that they suffer higher levels of guilt, blame, and responsibility, and greater feelings of rejection and abandonment; stronger feelings of stigmatization and social isolation and a particular impact on family systems including family interaction and communication [8,11,12,33,43]. Anecdotal evidence suggests that due to a lack of appropriate suicide prevention programmes and postsuicide support, survivors are not empowered to grieve the way they want or would like to.…”

“…Indeed, anecdotal evidence in the literature and personal observations suggest a great deal of anger is felt by suicide survivors [11,12,33]. The circumstances and other social and environmental factors, such as social stigma and a lack of answers and information, add complexities to the nature of the anger.…”

“…Kubler-Ross [31] describes a five-stage model of grief and bereavement that includes denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Extreme grief reactions include depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder which can influence the length of the bereavement process, making it longer with a slower recovery period [8,11,12,32,33]. However, human behaviour such as grieving is a dynamic process, and, often attempts to model human behaviour fails because most models fail to account for temporal changes and dynamics in behaviour [34].…”

“…The literature suggests adverse mental and emotional effects on suicide survivors (e.g. parents, siblings, relatives and friends) following a suicide [8,[10][11][12]24,27,29,33,38]. Suicide survivors choose to deal with such a traumatic experience despite the medical model.…”

Die Situation Hinterbliebener nach Suizid

“…Der Austausch mit ähnlich Betroffenen besitzt dabei eine Qualität, die nur in diesem Rahmen durch die ähnlichen Erfahrungen Betroffener entstehen kann [Seibl, 2001;Bürgin, 2001] [LaGrand, 1991;Clark et al, 1993]. Selbsthilfe ist jedoch, trotz der vielen positiven Aspekte, keineswegs als Ersatz für eine manchmal notwendige professionelle Behandlung zu sehen, sondern als eine wichtige Ergänzung.…”