Understanding the Aftermath of Suicide Loss continued from page 12
Robert Friedel , MD , former chief of psychiatry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham , shared in a personal communication that from a psychiatric point of view , whenever we lose a loved one , our limbic system and amygdala go on overdrive for approximately one year until we feel like ourselves again , working from our executive-functioning neocortex . This phenomenon may explain why , during bereavement , we forget things , lose our keys multiple times , drive the wrong way to work from our usual commute , forget to pay bills , and so on .
Clearly , even the so-called “ regular , old-fashioned grief ” can be very disruptive at many levels . Loss , grief , and sorrow are difficult even when we have anticipated a death , and even if the death had been normative .
TRAUMATIC LOSS
Stan ’ s loss of his wife and baby daughter , described above , illustrates how a death from suicide can be not only a source of loss , grief , and sorrow , but become a traumatic event ( s ) for survivors of suicide . Expecting an evening at home as part of their little three-person-family , Stan instead entered a death scene , administering CPR , desperately hoping to stop death , which was futile given Molly ’ s fatal means . Within seconds he was placed in a police car and treated as a homicide suspect instead of a grieving husband and father .
This is not the only type of trauma that survivors of suicide loss encounter , though being regarded as a homicide suspect happens with some regularity in my experience . Other types of trauma may include witnessing a suicide or being shot during the scuffle to prevent a suicide . Trauma can come from discovering the body of a loved one , or being the person left to clean up the scene . Having to mount a search or rescue effort to find a loved one ’ s remains can also be traumatic .
On rare occasions , survivors of suicide loss may experience derogatory treatment by the coroner , first responders , medical people , or other professionals . Though small in the scheme of things , Mariah — widowed by the suicide of her husband — was not initially able to recover her husband ’ s wedding ring ; the police inexplicably withheld it from her for over a year , keeping it in a box with his personal artifacts in the evidence storage facility .
Suicide is such an unthinkable type of loss that friends , family , neighbors , etc ., can easily be prone to wanting to blame someone for this unimaginable loss . Why ? Why ? Why ? If only that despicable daughterin-law had loved him better , or if only he had [ fill in the blank ] more , and so on . Precisely at the time when each family member needs tenderness and supportive care , many experience condemnation instead , the judgment serving as another rock added to the pile of this type of tortured loss .
As LCMHCs can imagine , and as many of us have seen firsthand in our clients , many of these conditions can result in the types of symptoms that align with posttraumatic stress .
COMPLICATED BEREAVEMENT
As if painful sorrow and trauma were not enough , the third head of Cerberus ’ beast-like qualities is complicated bereavement . A variety of conditions might contribute to complicated bereavement . Some usual factors in any type of loss might be , but are not limited to :
• No time to say goodbye ,
• A non-normative death ( out of step with when we think people are supposed to die [ old age ]),
• A death before unfinished business can be handled ,
• An unjust death ( e . g ., child shot in a drive-by shooting ).
continued on page 14 The Advocate Magazine 2023 , Issue # 1 American Mental Health Counselors Association ( AMHCA ) www . amhca . org
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