Research assignment (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2010. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-108). Also available on the World Wide Web.

The suicide of a loved one is a traumatic life event that brings considerable emotional suffering. In the present study, the term suicide survivor refers to an individual bereaved though suicide. In the aftermath of their loss, some suicide survivors become peer counsellors and thereby draw on their painful experiences to provide assistance to others bereaved in this manner. Although these individuals play an important supportive role, little is known about their experiences with doing this kind of volunteer work. This study sought to explore the phenomenon of peer counselling in suicide bereavement by addressing the question, what are the lived experiences of suicide survivors who become peer counsellors? The purpose of the study was to understand how these individuals conceptualize their volunteer work and how their volunteerism may affect their own ongoing healing from the loss to suicide. Participants were 15 individuals bereaved through suicide who had been volunteering with others bereaved in the same manner for at least two years. This research employed a qualitative phenomenological methodology to provide a detailed description of participants’ journeys that went from experiencing the suicide of a loved one, to the decision to become a peer counsellor, to, finally, providing support to other survivors. The findings suggest that participants understand the provision of peer counselling as a transformative process. As a result of their volunteering, they undergo personal growth and acquire new skills. They conceptualize providing peer counselling as reaching out to other survivors of suicide and thereby countering the loneliness and isolation of suicide bereavement. For the participants, being a peer counsellor means actively challenging the silence around suicide by speaking out about suicide-related issues and offering other survivors a safe space to share their stories. The broader implications of these findings for suicide postvention research and clinical practice are addressed.

The suicide of a loved one is a traumatic life event that brings considerable emotional suffering. In the present study, the term suicide survivor refers to an individual bereaved though suicide. In the aftermath of their loss, some suicide survivors become peer counsellors and thereby draw on their painful experiences to provide assistance to others bereaved in this manner. Although these individuals play an important supportive role, little is known about their experiences with doing this kind of volunteer work. This study sought to explore the phenomenon of peer counselling in suicide bereavement by addressing the question, what are the lived experiences of suicide survivors who become peer counsellors? The purpose of the study was to understand how these individuals conceptualize their volunteer work and how their volunteerism may affect their own ongoing healing from the loss to suicide. Participants were 15 individuals bereaved through suicide who had been volunteering with others bereaved in the same manner for at least two years. This research employed a qualitative phenomenological methodology to provide a detailed description of participants’ journeys that went from experiencing the suicide of a loved one, to the decision to become a peer counsellor, to, finally, providing support to other survivors. The findings suggest that participants understand the provision of peer counselling as a transformative process. As a result of their volunteering, they undergo personal growth and acquire new skills. They conceptualize providing peer counselling as reaching out to other survivors of suicide and thereby countering the loneliness and isolation of suicide bereavement. For the participants, being a peer counsellor means actively challenging the silence around suicide by speaking out about suicide-related issues and offering other survivors a safe space to share their stories. The broader implications of these findings for suicide postvention research and clinical practice are addressed.

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Thesis (MA (Psychology))--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Suicide is the third leading cause of death of worldwide, and its social ramifications are far-reaching. Due to the stigma associated with suicide, as well as the unique emotional processes that occur during bereavement following this mode of death, suicide bereavement is regarded as different - and more intense - than other grief experiences. While the effects of suicide on the suicide-bereaved have been well-documented using objective measures of outcome, the subjective, and often unquantifiable emotional, familial and social consequences of suicide have been largely under-researched. By using an interpretive approach, this study focuses on the subjective experiences of those who have lost a loved one to suicide. Five suicide-bereaved individuals were sampled from a particular community, and their experiences were elicited using semi-structured interviews. The results indicate a number of emotional as well as social processes that occur after suicide, including intense longing for the deceased; rationalisation, disbelief, and denial; feelings of anger, guilt, regret, and sadness; a search for answers, meaning and closure; and blaming and social isolation. While these processes cannot be said to occur exclusively in suicide bereavement, they appear to be experienced more intensely during this form of grief.

Support groups for suicide loss survivors are a relatively common resource used by those who are left to cope in the aftermath of a suicide death. Though descriptive studies have been used to provide an overview of support groups in the past, there have been no efforts to understand nuances of these groups and the impact of these groups and differing facilitation styles on the bereavement experience for attendees. This study explores primary data collected between March 2015 and December 2015 with a sample of 138 survivor of suicide loss support group facilitators in the United States and several other countries. Meaning making and meaning reconstruction is presented as the primary theory used to examine the attitudes of support group facilitators. Basic analytic procedures were used to explore sample descriptives, and an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) with an oblique rotation was used to identify the factors within the Survivor of Suicide Loss Support Group Facilitator Scale. Three factors were revealed with a simple structure, representing the latent themes of (1) Facilitator Perspective on the Role of the Story (α=.73), (2) Facilitator Perspective on the Role of the Facilitator (α=.63), and (3) Facilitator Perspective on Role of the Loss Survivor (α.59). Bivariate analyses revealed that factors 1 and 2 both had a significant relationship with length of time the facilitator had been leading the group, facilitator’s level of compassion satisfaction, and facilitator’s level of burnout. The findings of the EFA support the use of the scale as a tool to discern differences in attitudes about the role of meaning making and sharing of stories in the group as well as the role of the facilitator in aiding this process. The findings provide important information for understanding variation in support group facilitation styles and have implications for future exploration of outcomes for group attendees based on facilitator attitude and style. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

In recent years, a multitude of literature have discussed the turbulent nature for young adults to navigate the difficulties of suicide bereavement with lack of support. This experience can be further cumbersome when the bereavement is co-occurring within an academic profession, such as attending university. This study explored three participants experience of suicide bereavement support at a university level, utilizing a phenomenological arts-based approach for inquiry. Data analysis revealed eight common themes that reflect the university students' lived experiences of the phenomenon discussed: Acknowledgment of the communicated loss by faculty, provision of academic support, lack/absence of practice, reluctance, emotional response, non-faculty support, recall, omission. The findings within this study highlight the unique nature of arts expression and the use of it as a communicative tool to those experiencing a death loss. Results suggest a reluctance to disclose for fear of a further loss of professionalism within the University setting and the absence of a solidified grievance plan that left individuals feeling further unsupported. Furthermore, individuals spoke to a heightened need for meaning making of the experience to facilitate the bereavement process and a reliance on the self rather than community due to previous fears of disclosure. Our understanding of suicide bereavement would benefit from an inclusion of non-art affiliated participants, a wider sample size and individuals that associate outside of the female identification for a more diverse range of experiences.

(1) Background: The aim of the present study was to examine symptom classes of major depressive disorder (MDD), prolonged grief disorder (PGD), and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a sample of suicide-bereaved individuals, while accounting for loss-related characteristics. (2) Methods: A latent class analysis was conducted to identify classes of the suicide bereaved, sharing symptom profiles, in a German suicide-bereaved sample (N = 159). (3) Results: Our analyses revealed three main classes: a resilient class (16%), a class with high endorsement probability for PGD symptoms (50%), and a class with high endorsement probability for combined PGD/PTSD symptoms (34%). Prolonged grief and intrusive symptoms emerged across all classes, while MDD showed low endorsement probability. Our results indicate an association between class membership and time passed since the loss; however, this applies only to the comparison between the PGD and the resilient class, and not for the PGD/PTSD class. (4) Conclusions: Our results may provide information about the predictability of symptom clusters following suicide bereavement. The findings also represent a significant step towards tailoring treatments based on the needs of relevant suicide-bereaved subgroups through a symptom-level approach. Time passed since loss might explain differences between symptom clusters.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T20:40:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Daniela Reis e Silva.pdf: 3479822 bytes, checksum: 2bd8dd4c462da22cc01284d074772bca (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-12-11 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Suicide is a complex behavior and is considered as a public health problem. Little attention has been given to the surviving family members. The present research deals with the process of parental bereavement due to a child suicide. The process gathers two variable of potential risk for the development of complicated mourning: the loss of a child and the kind of death involving suicide. The research analyses matters related to the suicide of a child by means of a case study, which is based on a qualitative method, involving a mother who lost her son by suicide one year and three months before the study. A semi-structured interview and the construction of a genogram are used as tools. The thematic analysis reveals a singular bereavement process involving trauma and grief. It presents the son characteristics, the illness history, the suicide, the shock, the guilt, the paralysis, longing feelings, sadness, the ups and downs, the health and the resiliency among other emerging aspects, which seem to be mixed in the participant s verbalization influencing in a recurrent way the mourning process. The author draws the conclusion that religiosity, professional support, social support, art, meaning constructions, the way of sharing among other resources of confrontation can contribute positively, although in a short period of time, for a change in the future expectation. The author considers that the achieved information is only the beginning of recognition of the importance of not labeling negatively the survival family members over suicide, besides the possibility of breaking silence and prejudice involved in it so that they can receive the right support / O suicídio é um ato complexo considerado problema de saúde pública, e pouca atenção tem sido dispensada aos sobreviventes. Este trabalho trata do processo de luto de pais por suicídio de um filho por englobar duas variáveis de potencial risco para o desenvolvimento do luto complicado: a perda de um filho e a morte por suicídio. Examina o processo à luz do paradigma sistêmico. Adota uma metodologia de abordagem qualitativa, mediante um estudo de caso que envolve uma mãe enlutada há um ano e três meses. Utiliza como instrumentos uma entrevista semiestruturada e a construção do genograma familiar. A análise temática revela uma riqueza nos dados obtidos, apesar do trauma e do sofrimento envolvidos, mostrando que as características do filho, a história da doença, o suicídio, o choque, a culpa, a paralisia, a saudade, a tristeza, os altos e baixos, a saúde, a resiliência, entre outros aspectos emergentes que aparecem mesclados no discurso da participante, influenciam de maneira recursiva o processo de luto. Conclui que a religiosidade, o apoio profissional, o apoio social, a arte, a construção de significados, o compartilhar, entre outros recursos de enfrentamento, podem contribuir positivamente, mesmo em pouco tempo, para uma mudança nas expectativas para o futuro. Considera que os dados obtidos são apenas o começo do reconhecimento da importância do cuidado de não se rotular negativamente os sobreviventes ao suicídio, além da possibilidade de romper o silêncio e o preconceito que os envolvem, para que possam receber o acolhimento adequado