Evaluation of people bereaved by suicide

Abstract

Friends and acquaintances of people bereaved by a suicide in the family tend not to offer effective support. Societal attitudes to suicide and related perceptions (often “misperceptions”) of bereaved family members suggest that friends will not “be there” to the same degree and in the same ways that they would following other sorts of deaths. Thus counselors of those bereaved by suicide deaths must, in their support activities, make allowances.