Effective Communication With Bereaved Child Survivors of Suicide

TOPIC: While bereavement is considered by the agency of many to be among the greatest in quantity stressful life events, it becomes plane more distressing when it is related to the suicide of a lov individual Further, the death of a parent is traumatic for anyone, on the other hand it may be especially intensified for young children. This points to a stalwart need for the recognition and treatment of psychiatric and social puzzles associated with childhood bereavement.

PURPOSE AND SOURCES: The view of this paper is to review the literature and not absent a synopsis of the psychosocial consequences of childhood suicide survivor bereavement and outline communication issues that come up when talking with young suicide survivors.

CONCLUSIONS: A case is made to unravel and test interventions designed to suited the mental health needs of this important collection of individuals.

Search terms: bereavement, child, communication, survivors of suicide

Scope of the question at issue

In the year 2000 suicide was the 11th leading cause of death in the United States, with nearly 30000 suicides occurring annually (American Association of Suicidology, 2001; U Bureau of the Census, 1998) Estimates allude to that each year, approximately 60000 children must deal with the death of a relative to suicide (Pfeffer et al., 1997) While the death of a parent is a traumatic fact for anyone, it may be especially intensified for younger children. Studies intimate that when the death is owed to suicide, the impact can be associated with more long-term enigmas in comparison to nonsuicidal deaths (Cerel Fristad, Weller, & Weller, 1999)

Characteristics of Child Survivors of Suicide

Of children who are bereaved through the death of a parent, individual in five may manifest a wide range of emotional and behavioral symptoms at a horizontal sufficient to justify referral to a specialist service. These symptoms may include anxiety and /or depressive symptoms, fears, angry eruptions and regression in developmental milestones (Dowdney et al., 1999) however children who are survivors of parental suicide look after to experience even higher rates of anxiety, depression, poor place of education performance, and decreased social adjustment than children whose parents died of natural causes. Child survivors of parental suicide are left with the challenge of not alone trying to understand why their parent died by means of suicide but also of coping with the stigma that society places on a suicide death (Cerel et al., 1999)

As with cognitive unfolding children's emotional development is likewise different from that of adults. a certain number of common feelings experienced by bereaved children are sadness, anxiety, anger, shame, guilt, acceptance, and relief; the negative emotions are exacerbated among children mourning a suicide, and their result becomes more apparent around 6 month after the death (Cerel et al., 1999) For example, in a comparative close attention of bereaved children, Pfeffer, Jiang, Kakuma, Hwang, and Metsch (2002) place that all bereaved children in their sample experienced increased anxiety, aggression, and withdrawal in the weeks following the death, and children who were suicide-bereaved nurseed to experience more anxiety, anger, and shame along with depressive symptoms than their non-suicide-bereaved mates

In another study comparing children bereaved the couple through suicide and nonsuicide deaths, Pfeffer and associates place that children bereaved by parental suicide were more likely than children not bereaved by dint of parental suicide to experience anxiety immediately after the death followed by dint of anger at 6 months and shame through 1 year after the death. Within 18 month of parental death, children bereaved by the agency of suicide reported significantly more austere depressive symptoms (Pfeffer et al., 1997) This refer tos that children who must cope with the los of a parent to suicide are more likely to experience enigmas with long-term psychological and social adjustment. Therefore, early identification and therapeutic intervention is crucial to obstruct the development of negative health issues with these children.

As part of a longitudinal inquiry that continued their investigation of suicide-bereaved children, Cerel Fristad, Weller, and Weller (2000) assessed family histories of psychopathology and family environment before and after the death of a parent. Twenty-six suicide-bereaved children, ages 5 to 17 years, along with their surviving parents, were compared with 332 children and their surviving parents who had experienced a nonsuicide parental death. Comparisons were made end the use of structured and semistructured interviews directioned at intervals of 1, 6 13 and 25 month after the death of the parent. springs indicated that suicide-bereaved children exhibited greater evidence of psychopathology than those whose parents died from other causes. These families exhibited les stability, and relationships with the deceased parent prior to the suicide had been les satisfying. However, the surviving parents in the suicide-bereaved cluster had no more evidence of psychiatric disorders than the nonsuicide assemblage and there were no differences place between the groups related to the children's relationships with the surviving parents. The close attention was limited by a small sample size, on the contrary results indicated that suicide-bereaved children appear to be more vulnerable to psychopathology than their surviving parents, and that the surviving parents may have a positive issue upon their children's ability to deal with the suicide (Cerel et al., 2000)