JOIN A DISCUSSION ON "KEY INGREDIENTS" OF PEER SUICIDE GRIEF SUPPORT

03/14/2012

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What are your ideas about the "key ingredients" of peer suicide grief support? Please join the discussion on this important topic.

Peer grief support is an emerging field of practice that is especially applicable to helping people bereaved by suicide. For ages, those who have experienced grief themselves have offered to assist newly bereaved people, and now peer helper programs and training are among the forces transforming this means of support into a systematic practice. 

A significant amount of suicide grief support is delivered by peers, especially through suicide bereavement support groups, and it would be valuable to take a look at lessons being learned in other areas where peer helpers are delivering services. One such area is the U.S. military, regarding which a white paper was recently published, "Best Practice Identified for Peer Support Programs" (download available). The document identifies the following "key ingredients ... [that] account for the special effectiveness of peer support interventions":
  • Social support includes "emotional support, information and advice, practical assistance, and help in understanding or interpreting events."
  • Experiential knowledge (particularly knowledge based on common experience) gives peer supporters "greater credibility as 'experts' in dealing with the problems and challenges faced by the person seeking support."
  • Trust is present when the person being helped experiences the helper as honest, unselfish, and reliable. 
  • Confidentiality is the centerpost of effective peer assistance, in part because it is the basis for trusting the helper.
  • Easy access is fundamental for obvious reasons: Even if a peer support program is extraordinary in every other way, it cannot be effective unless people who need help are able to take part in the program.
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SURVIVORS ADDRESS SUICIDE LOSS AND GRIEF IN BLACK COMMUNITY

03/09/2012

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In this HLN-TV interview, Donna Barnes, executive director of NOPCAS (National Organization of People of Color against Suicide), and William and Naomi Powell, who facilitate a support group for survivors of suicide loss, talk about suicide and grief in the black community. 

The interview was broadcast in the wake of the suicide of Don Cornelius, who is characterized in a New York Times story as the person "who brought black music and culture into America’s living rooms when he created the dance show 'Soul Train.'”

HLN-TV reporter Richelle Carey says her hope is that this interview will help "break the silence and the shame that comes with such a tragedy," and points out that suicide is the third-leading cause of death among black men age 15-24. Barnes, whose son Marc died by suicide in 1990 (learn about the history of NOPCAS), addresses the culture of silence surrounding suicide 

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GRIEF SUPPORT IS KEY TO PUBLIC HEALTH APPROACH

03/08/2012

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Ed Shneidman, the father of modern suicidology, declared the following in his foreword to Albert Cain's 1972 book Survivors of Suicide:
A benign community ought routinely to provide postventive mental health care for the survivor-victims of suicidal deaths. Postvention is prevention for the next decade and for the next generation. Of the three possible temporal approaches to mental health crises -- prevention, intervention, and postvention -- in the case of suicide at least, postvention probably represents the largest problem and thus presents the greatest area for potential aid. [Cain, A. C. (Ed.). (1972). Survivors of suicide. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.]
Shneidman's declaration refers to postvention specifically focused on meeting the needs of the bereaved after a suicide fatality. He asserts that "postvention ... presents the greatest area for potential aid," and I believe the suicide prevention field has overlooked a practical approach centered around suicide grief support services that would exemplify "prevention for the next decade and for the next generation." Specifically, by a "practical approach," I do not mean a particular program or product: I mean the public health approach to prevention.
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