ABSTRACT
I needed some help totally removed from the family… I felt safe with [a GP-based] counsellor. (Ursula)
If I could just have talked with somebody else, just to somebody else that it had happened to, just to say how much I blamed myself and they could say, ‘Well everybody feels like that, you know. I felt like that, and it’s not your fault.’ (Jennifer)
Earlier studies of the impact of suicide have suggested that with selfinflicted deaths: ‘the coping mechanisms of the bereaved…are especially likely to be thrown into disarray’ (Shepherd and Barraclough 1979:67). But while subsequent research has modified the view that suicide bereavement is necessarily always a catastrophic event (Clark and Goldney 2000), survivors may still look for support outside their own family and social networks.
