By Lorraine A. Winsey, RN, Patient Care Manager
Inpatient Psychiatric Services

Recovery means to regain, to get back to or to restore. It is a process of learning to deal with each day’s challenges. In regard to suicide loss, a significant lessening of most of the emotions that you are feeling right now marks recovery. Suicide loss makes you vulnerable to a wide range of problems. Depression and severe anxiety reactions can occur. Complicated grief reactions can occur. Worst of all, suicidality can occur.

Suicide loss is the most horrible loss that anyone can suffer. You may feel betrayed, angry, out of control, disoriented and hurt. You may feel that the one you lost has let you down by leaving you behind to mourn. You may feel anger that your loved one never gave you the chance to help. You may feel guilt or responsibility because you feel you should have or could have done something to prevent this. You have lost your emotional bearings and you can find nothing in your past experience to help you cope.

Every suicide is different and the circumstances leading up to it are always unique to the individual involved. However, many studies of suicide suggest that it comes about because of intense psychological pain and extreme feelings of hopelessness on the part of the individual taking his or her life. Many of those suffering depression may make some effort to hide it. This is especially the case with male teenagers and men. Some may not have realized that they were suffering from depression. Others, if they asked for help, felt they would appear weak and would incur shame or stigma.

Feeling suicidal is a tremendous psychological burden that may distance those bearing it from those who care about them. Most suicidal individuals do not really want to die. They just want to end the pain and hopelessness. Many of those who complete suicide struggle with this ambivalence to the end. It is becoming clear that suicide is strongly related to changes in the brain and to chemical imbalances in the body. These factors may override the individual’s ability to reach out.

Suicide is not predictable. To some degree it can be determined that someone may be at risk of completing suicide. However, there is no way to definitely project it or when a particular individual may complete suicide.

Suicide loss does follow a pattern. There doesn’t seem to be a standard grieving process that we all go through. It is different for each of us in terms of what or when things happen. There does seem to be some phases that we each experience. There is the dissonance phase. This is the initial period after the loss and you can feel panic, blame and incrimination. This may be followed by the debilitation phase which can make you feel a loss of control over your life, a sense of powerlessness. Eventually you rebound and the acute nature of your grief subsides and you are in the desensitization phase. You are still vulnerable to relapses at this phase. And finally there is the differentiation phase. You are not better or stronger; you are just "different." You can function better and, except for that residual sense of loss that will always be with you, you feel normal again. These phases can takes months or years.

You should contact your health care provider as soon as possible after your loss. Working through your grief in a group setting with other people that understand your pain can be therapeutic and help you through your tragedy.

Survivors of Suicide, Inc. is a nonprofit, all-volunteer organization that started in the Philadelphia area in 1983. They offer support groups locally and can be contacted at 215-545-2242 (phillysos@hotmail.com).

Two good places to visit on the internet for information on suicide:

• American Foundation for the Prevention of Suicide (www.afsp.org)
• American Association of Suicidology (www.suicidology.org)