Explores the complex emotional issues children face after a parent commits suicide and offers practical advice on how the remaining parent and other family members can help them cope.

The suicide of a parent has life-long consequences; few more traumatic scenarios exist, and counselors often struggle for ways to help clients deal with its effects. Few understand the pain and life-altering effects of these tragedies better than children who have experienced the suicide of a parent. Despite this, there are few texts that incorporate and evaluate the first-person accounts of grief following a suicide while advancing a method for helping. Losing a Parent to Suicide analyzes stories of parent suicides and explores the grief and coping processes that follow, discovering the strategies, methods and modes of therapy that have empowered grieving individuals and helped them rebuild their lives.

Before Their Time is the first work to present adult children survivors' (defined as eighteen or above at the time of the parent's death) accounts of their loss, grief, and resolution following a parent's suicide. In one section, the book offers the perspectives of sons and daughters on the deaths of mothers; in another, the perspectives of sons and daughters on the deaths of fathers. In a third section, four siblings reflect on the shared loss of their mother.Each of these survivors faces the common difficulties associated with losing a loved one by suicide. They also experience difficulties specific to their status as both adult and child. Topics such as the impact of the parent's suicide on adult children's personal and professional choices, marriages and parenting, sibling and surviving parent relationships are explored with sensitivity and insight. Various coping skills, including humor, are described.The writers describe feelings of regret and responsibility related to their parent's suicide. They express concern about other family members' vulnerability to suicide. They speak openly about the fears and stresses they face and how they cope with them.The authors ranged in age from nineteen to thirty-six at the time of the parent's death. Between one and twenty-five years have passed since that tragedy.In addition to the first-person narratives, the book includes a resource section with a national listing of suicide survivor support groups; an overview of existing research on survivors of suicide by John L. McIntosh, past president of the American Association of Suicidology; and an essay on elderly suicide by David C. Clark, secretary-general, International Association for Suicide, and editor-in-chief of Crisis. The book is introduced with a Foreword by Rev. Charles Rubey, founder and director of Loving Outreach to Survivors of Suicide. Author note: Mary Stimming, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Dominican University, gives lectures and workshops on suicide and religion. >P>Maureen Stimming, Associate Director of Career Services at Chicago-Kent College of Law, served as a therapist in a residential mental health treatment center before completing graduate studies in psychology. Prior to her work at Kent, she served as a counselor in the Chicago parochial school system.

Albert Y. Hsu wrestles with emotional and spiritual questions surrounding suicide, ultimately pointing survivors to the God who offers comfort in our grief and hope for the future. This revised edition now includes a discussion guide for suicide survivor groups.

When people die by suicide, they leave behind family and friends who suddenly find themselves mourning the person's loss and wondering what happened. This guide addresses many personal issues related to a death by suicide, including telling others, working through the grief, finding what helps people to heal, and grieving in children and youth. This Ontario guide also outlines practical things that need taking care of, such as arranging a funeral and dealing with the deceased's personal, legal and financial matters. A resource section lists organizations, websites and books that may help.

Children and teens who experience the death of a parent are never the same. Only in the last decade have counselors acknowledged that children grieve too, and that unresolved issues can negatively impact children into adulthood. Unaddressed grief can lead to depression, substance abuse, and relationship difficulties. For at least three generations of adults, these issues have been largely ignored. Having worked with thousands of families as Executive Director of the Dougy Center for Grieving Children, Donna Schuurman understands the dangers of unresolved grief better than anyone else. In Never the Same, Schuurman offers expert advice and encouragement to empower readers to reflect on their unique situation, come to terms with the influence of their parent's death, and live more healthful, peaceful lives. The only book of its kind, Never the Same is an essential companion for those still struggling with the early loss of a parent.

Suicide would appear to be the last taboo. Even incest is now discussed freely in popular media, but the suicide of a loved one is still an act most people are unable to talk about--or even admit to their closest family or friends. This is just one of the many painful and paralyzing truths author Carla Fine discovered when her husband, a successful young physician, took his own life in December 1989. And being unable to speak openly and honestly about the cause of her pain made it all the more difficult for her to survive. With No Time to Say Goodbye, she brings suicide survival from the darkness into light, speaking frankly about the overwhelming feelings of confusion, guilt, shame, anger, and loneliness that are shared by all survivors. Fine draws on her own experience and on conversations with many other survivors--as well as on the knowledge of counselors and mental health professionals. She offers a strong helping hand and invaluable guidance to the vast numbers of family and friends who are left behind by the more than thirty thousand people who commit suicide each year, struggling to make sense of an act that seems to them senseless, and to pick up the pieces of their own shattered lives. And, perhaps most important, for the first time in any book, she allows survivors to see that they are not alone in their feelings of grief and despair.

"The book is well organized, well detailed, and well referenced; it is an invaluable sourcebook for researchers and clinicians working in the area of bereavement. For those with limited knowledge about bereavement, this volume provides an excellent introduction to the field and should be of use to students as well as to professionals," states Contemporary Psychology. The Lancet comments that this book "makes good and compelling reading....It was mandated to address three questions: what is known about the health consequences of bereavement; what further research would be important and promising; and whether there are preventive interventions that should either be widely adopted or further tested to evaluate their efficacy. The writers have fulfilled this mandate well."

When a young boy learns the news of his Father's sudden death, pain and sorrow become abruptly real. His carefree childhood is instantly altered as his once 'normal' world is turned upside down. His grief carries him through a wide range of emotions until one day he finally finds healing within and a way to hold onto his memories. A highly relatable and ultimately triumphant book that helps children reflect on the loss of a parent and find a healthy way to accept and move forward.

A suicide leaves behind more victims than just the individual. And yet there are very few professional resources that provide the necessary background, research, and tools to effectively work with the survivors. This edited volume addresses the need for an up-to-date, professionally oriented summary of the clinical and research literature on the impact of suicide bereavement on survivors.