'TAPS' MILITARY SURVIVOR OUTREACH IS A MODEL FOR SUICIDE GRIEF SUPPORT

Between 20 and 30 percent of the bereaved who receive support from the private organization best known for serving those who have lost a military loved one are, in fact, suicide survivors, according to Bonnie Carroll, founder of the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS). In a Huffington Post article, Bonnie writes,

Every day, three to four people contact ... TAPS for the very first time seeking help and support in coping with the death by suicide of a loved one who served in our Armed Forces. They join the more than 4,000 people grieving a death by suicide who are already part of our community of care and support at TAPS.

In fact, TAPS annually conducts the most extensive healing conference in the world exclusively for survivors of suicide loss (this year's conference is Nov. 1-3 in Colorado Springs, Colo.).

Bonnie's husband died in a military aviation accident in 1992, and for two decades, she has been a tireless advocate for the bereaved families of those who serve or have served in the military. TAPS offers a variety of support and professional resources to the bereaved, and it is a pioneer in comprehensive peer support services, including a mentor program that matches a newly bereaved person with a trained peer helper.

We have found that people find healing and comfort in peer support and connecting with others who experience a similar loss.

Bonnie credits Kim Ruocco, whose Marine husband died by suicide in 2005, with building TAPS's ambitious response to suicide loss into the quality program that it is today.

This program provides wrap-around care and assistance ... [for] families [who] often come to us isolated, hurting and suffering. They may carry deep shame about how their loved one died. Even their closest friends may not know how to help or support them. But TAPS does.

TAPS has taken its experience with grief from all manner of deaths, caused by combat, accidents, and disease, and has built a body of knowledge and a menu of compassionate programs that is customized for survivors of suicide loss to a degree that no outreach of this scope has achieved.*

Families grieving the death by suicide of a loved one worry that their loved one's life will now be remembered only for the way it ended, not for the way it was lived ... In the caring community at TAPS, we give these hurting families a safe place to share, talk, weep, laugh and forge forward ... We companion them as they cope with their grief and start their lives anew.

TAPS may be contacted at www.taps.org or 800-959-TAPS (8277).

*An online outreach service focused on support for suicide grief that rivals the scope of TAPS is the Alliance of Hope for Suicide Survivors at www.allianceofhope.org (AOH services are for any survivor of suicide loss whether related to a military or a civilian death).