Bereavement by suicide and natural death : a comparison study

Abstract

Although there is a great deal of research on record about why people suicide, there have been a very limited number of studies which focus on what happens to the family and friends of the suicide deceased. This study examined the grief reactions of 69 close family members who were bereaved within the past two years by either a suicide or a natural form of death. It utilised the Grief Experience Questionnaire (GEQ) developed by Barrett and Scott (1989) which is a 55 item questionnaire developed specifically for examining the suicide survivor's experience of grief and enables comparison groups to be easily examined.

The subjects were divided into groups on a number of factors, namely, mode of death, anticipation of death, time since the death and age of survivor. Whether the relationship to the deceased affects the survivor's grief was also examined.

The key finding in this study was a marked difference in the separate subtests and total grief reaction between the suicide bereaved and the natural death bereaved groups. The GEQ can be divided into 11 subtests. On eight of these subtests (stigmatisation, guilt, responsibility for the death, shame, rejection by the deceased, self destructive behaviour, and reactions unique to suicide) there was a significant difference between the natural death bereaved group and the suicide bereaved group. As expected, the somatic reactions and general grief reactions subtests yielded no difference in the responses from the suicide bereaved compared to the natural death bereaved. Surprisingly, on the search for explanation subtest there was no significant difference between the two groups.

The groups were also divided into short·term bereaved and long term bereaved. Although all subjects responded differently according to the mode of death, differences were also found with respect to anticipation of death and age of the survivor. The short term bereaved responded differently with regards to the anticipation of death in the somatic and general grief reactions subtests. The long term bereaved responded differently with regards to the age of survivors in the guilt, responsibility, and unique reactions subtests.

Relationship to the deceased was examined in a qualitative way. The responses led to some interesting findings. Spouses were found'to have a slightly higher level of grief than parents or adult children. Siblings responded with the highest level of grief but this may have been influenced by the number of suicide bereaved siblings in this study.

Limitations of this study and suggestions for further research are stated.