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SURVEY: SUICIDE BEREAVED MEN NEED HELP -- AND ARE WILLING TO HELP

4/19/2014

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A recent survey of men bereaved by suicide suggests that:

• Suicide bereavement is profound and sustained for the majority of men, with 30% reporting that grief remained a constant difficulty in their lives one to three years after their loss and another 30% saying that it was a constant difficulty for longer than three years.
• Men generally believe friends, family, and peers (others who have experienced a loss to suicide) are the most helpful.
• Peer assistance and one-on-one help are especially valued by men, who also say they rely on information from the Internet for assistance.
• Most men believe men and women grieve differently, and plenty of men fit the stereotypes commonly associated with men's handling of emotional matters.
• Many men, on the other hand, believe that stereotypes get in the way of healthy grieving and that societal influences hamper men's grieving.
• Many also see bereavement as very individualistic, reporting that they are as emotionally expressive about their grief as women are.
• Men are interested in being peer helpers for other bereaved men, especially if they are far enough along in their own grief and are trained and supported.

This last finding -- that many men are willing to help each other with grief after suicide -- is of utmost importance, for men themselves likely hold the keys to their own recovery.

Unified Community Solutions (my private consultancy) and the Carson J Spencer Foundation (Sally Spencer-Thomas's nonprofit organization) distributed the survey to help us explore developing more-effective programs and resources for suicide bereaved men. We are hopeful that by this summer, we'll have an idea about how we might begin making new inroads into supporting men bereaved by suicide.

Please see the copy of the slides from the presentation on the survey that Sally and I (and Rick Mogil, who directs suicide grief programs for the Didi Hirsch Community Mental Health Center) delivered at the American Association of Suicidology conference in Los Angeles last Saturday.
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FATHER'S BRIEF TESTIMONY CAPTURES ESSENCE OF PARENTAL GRIEF

2/3/2014

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Jeff Lassater, in nothing more than a two-minute talk with StoryCorp, gives priceless testimony on the complex emotional texture of the aftermath of suicide.

His 14-year-old son, Jeremiah, died by suicide in 2008, and in Jeff's soft, clear voice, he tells us "the grief never goes away ... the guilt, you'll always have." I certainly get that. But even so, I hear in his words evidence of a man who is fighting the good fight, who -- in the very act of saying what he is saying -- is coping with his grief and dealing with his feelings.

"I was Jeremiah's parent," he says. "I was supposed to be his protector, so I'm the one that's responsible for that action." His declaration conjures up -- in the real voice of a real parent -- the tension between what caused his child's death and the responsibility he feels for his child's welfare. In those few words, he touches the heart of countless bereaved parents who struggle with what they did or didn't do. For me, the statement is not about fault or blame -- but about identity: I am the boy's father.

Jeff's closing lines reject the passage of time as a simple balm for grief:
You know, people say, "Well time heals everything." Not when it comes to this.
I understand his rejection of that trite saying, but it also makes me wonder how Jeff sees time now: What does the passage of time mean to him? Some measure of healing is evident in his work on the foundation he started in his son's name. Surely, other forces have healed him -- for he had the courage one day to step in front of a microphone and share a few hundred words of wisdom with the rest of us.
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FJC ON THE ROAD: PERSONAL STORY SHOWS NEED TO STUDY BEREAVED MEN

11/17/2013

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Until mid-December, I'll be writing "FJC On The Road" posts to keep readers up-to-date on my travels and on my reflections about suicide bereavement. This post -- originally written for the American Association of Suicidology's "Newslink" -- announces this important survey for men who are bereaved by suicide. FJC

What do we know about the needs of men who are bereaved by suicide, and -- if, in fact, male survivors of suicide loss do have unique needs -- what is being done to meet those needs? The answer to the first question is that we know very little specifically about men's needs after they experience a loss to suicide (beyond what we know generally about grief after suicide, about the differences between men's and women's psychological make-up, and about their different styles of communication and help-seeking). The answer to the second question is that almost nothing is being done to meet the special needs of men who have lost a loved one to suicide.

Here is a personal story -- not about grief specifically but about "sharing emotions" -- that illustrates why it is important to find answers to these questions.

The first experience I had that marked me as a man in therapy (as opposed to a woman in therapy) was in early 1982 in an aftercare support group in Twin Falls, Idaho, which was designed to help people who had completed inpatient treatment for addiction make a successful transition back to the community after spending a month in an institution.


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