Comparison of elderly with young-adult suicides Part I: Is there a suicidal personality?
by Ernest Shulman, Ph.D.
Dozens of research reports have contrasted the key factors in elderly versus young suicides. Differences have been emphasized, similarities usually skipped over. An important reason for this disparity is that recognition of the wide diversity of suicidal motivations has shifted attention from what all who kill themselves have in common. In general, researchers seem to have concluded long ago there is no suicidal personality. But such a conclusion may have been premature.
One way to evaluate the commonalities among suicides is a comparison of the issues that distinguish suicides across the age spectrum. A representative example of the studies emphasizing differences between old and young is Conwell, et al (1996). These researchers reported that suicide risk among the clinically depressed increased with age, whereas psychosis and substance abuse were associated more with young patients.
This article uses Bruno Bettelheim, the psychologist, and George Sanders, the actor, to investigate how their personalities interacted with the stresses of old age, resulting in self-inflicted death. The second article (posted separately) article examines young-adult suicides as a contrast. Continue reading››
Volunteers needed for parent survivors of suicide study
Despite the burden of suicide in the United States, very little is known
about the experience of losing a loved one to suicide.
The purpose of this study is to investigate what factors may contribute to
personal growth in the aftermath of this kind of loss.
Participants should be a parent who has lost a child of any age to suicide
within the last two years. The survey is available on-line and should take
less than 30 minutes to complete.
Principal investigator: Melinda Moore
The Catholic University of America
Participation is completely confidential.
If you are interested in participating, please visit:
Living with the Unimaginable: Surviving Murder-Suicide Loss
by Tawna Righter
The stories are plastered across the news: “Family Dies in Murder-Suicide” or they are simply mentioned in a few short sentences on Page 5 that another man has killed a woman and then himself. The scenarios differ slightly but the general outcome is the same: someone, usually a male, kills one or more persons and then himself. Families are horrifically devastated and communities are shocked and confused by the drastic actions taken by someone they knew to be a nice person. Unfortunately, it is a repeating scenario nearly everyday in America. 
Statistics collected from news clippings by the Community Awareness and Support Center, an organization founded specifically for murder-suicide survivors, show that 2008 experienced 533 murder-suicide events with the loss or wounding of more than 1,200 Americans. These tragedies leave countless numbers of survivors from the immediate families and friends, to work or classmates and first responders. I became one of these statistics in November of 1990 and then again in November 1998. Continue reading››
Men’s Experience with Grief
by Adrian Hill, LLB
In 1994, I attended my first suicide prevention conference with my wife, a noted psychologist with considerable expertise in suicide prevention and bereavement programs. Traveling to Canada’s artic, we visited Iqaluit in Nunavut, a community of 3,000 people, the only city in a vast region.
Organized by the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention, there were keynote addresses, workshops, seminars, and meetings with speakers from around the world. I volunteered to help out and immersed myself in the conference. I experienced firsthand the anguish and grief of the local community which has been ravaged by suicide deaths for the past 20 years. Knowing next to nothing about suicide, prevention, and bereavement, there was much to learn, absorb and take to heart.
This first conference experience for me started an educational process that quickly accelerated in 1996 when I became Executive Director of a National Lawyers’ Assistance Program in Canada. While I had helped found the program in 1990, I was now responsible for developing Health, Wellness, and Recovery materials for 70,000 lawyers and judges across Canada. To me, it had become natural to include suicide prevention in the new materials I was creating. Continue reading››
The Patient-Therapist Relationship in Suicide Loss
by Wayne Hankammer, MA, LPC
Loss is a large factor in suicide. Its impact on the suicidal person is well documented as well as the devastation of loss from the actual suicide. So, loss is a two-way street in suicidology. Suicide, felt as loss, ends life of one and changes forever the lives of others.
This is the story of my experience with death and how this reality changed my life. No stranger to death, I’ve seen it as a cop in accident scenes and elsewhere. While I was the commander for an Air Force Security Police unit one of our sergeants was murdered off-duty. I lost my father and dear friends, too. I also was a suicide hotline worker fielding one very lethal caller once. But nothing compares to the suicide death of a patient of mine who will be referred to here as “Dana.” At the time, I had been working as a therapist for about eight years professionally. The review of Dana’s suicide with staff was painful and necessary, but the impact to me was delayed. Continue reading››
Suicide survivors who themselves took their lives: Charles Boyer, John Berryman, and Ernest Hemingway
by Ernest Shulman, Ph.D.
Imagine parents in a support group for those who suffered an adult child’s death. They are discussing the impulse they have been feeling to kill themselves. They are not exceptional. According to a survey, many bereaved parents of a suicide consider ending their lives: “The urge to be with the child is … as great as … the need to end the pain” (Blank, 1998, p. 83), “exacerbated by the sense the child is not really dead, but awaits rescue. The search for the dead child is shared by most bereaved parents, whether their lost child was very young or an adult” (Blank, 1998, p. 113.) “This grief leaves a permanent void requiring reorganization of parents’ lives. But at first they struggle to cling to their dead children: They become zombies, members of the walking dead” (Blank, 1998, p. 82). Eventually priorities are reordered, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.
Charles Boyer (1899-1978), Hollywood actor and once the epitome of the handsome French lover, and his devoted, inseparable English wife, Pat, lost their only child. In 1965, Michael, 21, shot himself. The Boyers never recovered. Continue reading››
“Grief: A Family Healing” Short Film
By Jeffrey Jay Orgill
In February 2009, after breaking up with my girlfriend and moving out of our home, my dad invited me to move in with him and I found myself living back in the house where I’d grown up. This was a bit troubling to me for many reasons– primarily the state of disrepair the house had fallen into and the story behind that. When I was asked to be on a “Men and Grief” panel at the American Association of Suicidology being held in San Francisco I decided to make a film on the subject which I would show at the conference.
My dad had suffered extreme grief from a family tragedy, my younger brother Brian’s suicide, and the house had become a stark reflection of his inner suffering. I’d made another short narrative film which focused on my mom’s experience soon after my brother’s death and now I was making a short documentary about my dad and youngest brother’s experience with grief. Continue reading››
When Tragedy Strikes: Suicide Postvention on a College Campus
By Sally Spencer-Thomas, Ph.D.
(Originally printed in the International Association for Suicide Prevention’s Postvention Taskforce Newsletter, September 2009, www.iasp.info).
In his rural high school, David had it all– valedictorian, president of his class, and a varsity starter for the basketball team. When a good friend and teammate of his took his life, David’s world assumptions were shattered, and he found himself spending much of his summer drinking with the other members of the team as they tried to cope with the loss. As college started in the fall, he moved to another state to attend a big urban college, and he left his friends behind. He struggled with his classes and felt very isolated and lonely despite being surrounded by lots of people. By mid-semester, he received a report card of failing grades and got a strong reprimand from his father who feared David would lose his scholarship. On the day before David was supposed to go home for the holidays, he hung himself in his dormitory bedroom. Continue reading››
Running with Spirit
By Sally Spencer-Thomas, Ph.D.
Flipping through a box of photos, I come across a picture of me from a few years ago. I am in Little Rock, Arkansas, and I am ready to run. My face is somber and determined, and my racing singlet is covered with pictures– Carson on the back, Sushi on the front. Running has always been my form of therapy, but training for the Little Rock Marathon, was different. This is my story of love, loss, and how running saved me.
On September 16th, my third son Jackson is born, bringing with him joy to the world and 50 pounds of midsection for me. Within two weeks I am back to exercise: first walking then jogging then running. As pounds melt off, I set my sights on my next running goal.
When my two closest running friends, Leslie and Anna, moved away from Denver in the preceding year, we decided we would try as often as family and finances allowed to get together somewhere in the world to run a reunion marathon. In the beginning of October, we decide the Little Rock Marathon would be our first. Arkansas’ Governor Huckabee lost 110 pounds training for this marathon. In our little on-line running support group we joke: will we beat the Governor? Continue reading››
In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother’s Suicide Book Excerpt
By Nancy Rappaport, MD
“It is family lore that I am the last person my mother saw before she killed herself. She drove to my father’s house pleading to see the children, but I was the only child at home. My father demanded that she leave. Bee, our housekeeper, hustled me out the door and down the driveway toward my mother who waited desolate on the street. She bent down and caressed my hair – I remember – as she whispered instructions to Bee to watch over us, especially me. And then she left….I am often asked if I remember my mother. I appreciate that the question is a way to express the hope that my loss has been tempered, at least, by a photograph, a necklace, or her words – anything I might call on to evoke her presence. But I have few mementos and even fewer memories. My mother is defined by her absence…. Continue reading››