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UNIT 2 ■ Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing Interventions
■■ A sense of inner injury; family feels wounded; does not know how they will ever get over it and get on with life ■■ A severe strain placed on relationships; a sense of impatience, irritability, and anger possible between family members
■■ A heightened feeling of vulnerability to illness and disease possible with this added burden of emo- tional stress Read “Real People, Real Stories” for a better under- standing of one person’s lived experience of losing a child to suicide.
Real People, Real Stories
how to use it, so it just sat there for the longest time. My other son heard they were going to use the money for supplies, so I went and talked to them to make sure that didn’t happen. The school eventually built a memorial garden that became dedicated to all of the students who had died. Paul died in June, and in August, when all the other students were returning to school, I got a call from a community sui- cide survivors counselor who told me she was holding a high school assembly to discuss suicide. I wanted her to talk to the ninth and tenth graders, but they wouldn’t per- mit it. I thought the younger kids needed to talk about and learn about this too—they had been my younger son’s class- mates, and they were affected by it as well. When the sui- cide counselor intervened, the teachers were told to watch Paul’s friends for any evidence of “copycat” behavior, but that was all. I felt the school administration thought there was a stigma in talking about the cause of his death. I found out later that the seniors were talking about and memorial- izing Paul in their study halls. They were remembering him as a friend who was missed. Karyn: How has your family coped with Paul’s death? Emmy: We didn’t talk about Paul for the longest time; it was as if he didn’t exist. We were very separate; we all went in our own directions. My husband started taking long bicycle trips, and he worked on a suicide hotline. I got very involved with offering a program for high school students called Listening POST (People Offering Students Time), which allowed students to talk about anything they wanted to. Karyn: I know you’ve told me that you’re still close to sev- eral of Paul’s peers. Emmy: Oh yes, and their children too. But our family just became very separate. I don’t even know how my other son got through his freshman year of high school. We went to a suicide survivors group as a family, and it was important to me as an outlet to talk, but we didn’t talk as a family . . . and then we just stopped going, and the people who knew Paul didn’t talk to us. I so wanted to talk to people who knew Paul. After we stopped going to the survivors group, I started going to CoDA [Co-Dependents Anonymous] meetings,
Losing a loved one to suicide results in a grief process often complicated by stigma, misinformation, lack of information, and sometimes a sense of alienation from others. Emmy’s story describes her ongoing journey to grapple with the loss of her son to suicide. Karyn: We’ve talked before but tell me more about your journey since Paul’s death. Emmy: My son Paul died in 1986 at age 17. The thing I remember most is that no one was talking about it. There were 10 students who died in his high school. Two others were known to be suicides. Karyn: Do you mean no one was talking about it in the school system? Emmy: Well, the students in Paul’s class took up a collec- tion that was for Paul, but the school couldn’t decide
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