Question
What does it mean to be a suicide survivor?
Answer
A suicide survivor is not someone who has attempted suicide. It is someone who is the friend or family member of a person who died by suicide. A suicide attempt survivor is a person who has attempted suicide and survived. These terms are often confused which, even further perpetuates the stigma through misunderstanding of what these terms actually mean, so I just want to be clear. A suicide survivor is a family member or friend of a person who died by suicide and a suicide attempt survivor is someone who, themselves, has attempted and survived.
Suicide survivors describe the loss as a death like no other. It is unspeakably shattering to the suicide survivor's world. And studies suggest when we think about who suicide survivors are, that at least six people are intimately traumatized by the death when somebody dies by suicide.
So, if you just quickly do the math in your head, we know that there are 44,000 (on average), suicide deaths a year. Multiply that by six and then compound that, because the impact of suicide survivors does not go away after a year. Every year there are another 44,000 suicides, multiply that by another six, and then the following year, and so on and so on.
As you can see suicide impacts just about everybody. Once suicide survivors start talking and talking with others, pretty much anyone they talk to will say, “Oh yes, I do know or I have been impacted by suicide… somebody in my family, or my neighbor, or my coworker.”
So, it really is a very large group of people who are suicide survivors.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the webinar, Suicide Awareness, Assessment and Intervention for Allied Health Professionals, Module 5, presented by Nika Ball, MOT, OTR/L, ATP and Angela Moss, PhD RN, APRN-BC.
