About the Website

Currently, suicide is at an all-time high. According to the CDC’s provisional data, nearly 50,000 Americans died by suicide in 2022, which is both a 2.6% increase from 2021 and the highest number in recorded history. Consequently, as deaths by suicide rise, so do the number of survivors: the family members, friends, lovers, and acquaintances who “are left behind to grieve and make sense of the death” (Cerel et al., 2009, p. 269). 

Unfortunately, very little data has been collected on the prevalence of suicide survivors, but we can assume that this population is decently large. In fact, “It is estimated that 85% of people in the United States will know someone personally who has completed suicide” (Tal Young, 2012, p. 178). Furthermore, based on “rough estimates” from 2006, when ~30,000 suicides occurred per year in the United States, each death left “six survivors for every suicide,” meaning that “at least one in every 64 Americans (1.5%) is a survivor of suicide” (Cerel et al., 2009, 269). Considering the 66% increase in deaths by suicide from 2006 to 2022, as well as the hundreds of thousands of individuals lost to suicide in the 16 years between then and now, it’s fair to assume that the population of suicide survivors is on the rise. 

However, just as miniscule data has been collected on suicide survivor rates, very few resources and opportunities for help exist to guide these individuals through their bereavement. Thus, for our final project, we have developed this website to do exactly that. It is high time that this ever-growing group gets the attention they deserve, and we hope that A Survivor’s Source—while not perfect nor exhaustive—can help even one person undergoing such a tremendous loss. 

As a matter of fact, the grief that suicide survivors experience has been argued as “different [and perhaps more difficult] than other losses,” due to a multitude of factors. First, survivors may “feel guilty… and hold themselves responsible for the death.” At the same time, the bereaved may struggle with feelings of rejection, abandonment, and anger towards the deceased as they question “the meaning of the death,” wondering why the dead may have chosen to do what they did. Finally, suicide remains a taboo topic in the United States; despite increasing awareness of the importance of mental health and resources for those struggling, broaching the topic of suicide is difficult and can be met with negative reactions, as people typically don’t like to consider and discuss morbid topics. (Honeycutt & Praetorius, 2016) 

Consequently, the grief of suicide survivors can be considered disenfranchised: grief which is not “openly acknowledged, socially sanctioned, or publicly mourned" (Bryant & Peck, 2009). In other words, the stigma which surrounds deaths by suicide often means that less public sympathy and support are extended to survivors. This then leads survivors to bottle things up instead of discussing their experience with their friends and other loved ones, thereby depriving them of the cathartic experience of shared grief.

This deprivation can also lead to the development of complicated grief, which is grief that is "prolonged, unresolved, or traumatic" (Levi-Belz and Levi-Ari, 2019, p. 2). According to Mitchell et al. (2004), losing someone to suicide drastically increases the bereaved's chances of experiencing complicated grief, with nearly half of suicide survivors reportedly grappling with it. Survivors who experience complicated grief are ten times more likely to have suicidal thoughts and attempts, compared to other bereaved individuals (Levi-Belz and Levi-Ari, 2019), and left untreated, complicated grief can greatly impact a survivor’s quality of life by depleting social functioning, worsening their mental and physical health, and causing lower overall energy (Mitchell et al., 2004).

Altogether, it is easy to see just how difficult losing someone to suicide can be, and thus, it’s entirely unfair for survivors to have to bear the burden of this kind of loss on their own, especially when suicide rates are at the highest they’ve ever been before. Moreover, according to Cerel et al., “Most suicide survivors do not seek out formal or informal support or mental health treatment. Only about 25 percent of [those surveyed]... reported receiving any help since the suicide, despite seventy-four percent indicating a desire for help” (2009, p. 271). These startling numbers indicate a serious problem: that survivors are not receiving the help and assistance they need. As such, A Survivor’s Source aims to guide those in need, offering various resources and ways of coping in a concise, consolidated manner.

The first suggestion our website provides is support groups. Although nonsuicide-specific bereavement groups may be helpful, we chose to place emphasis on support groups which are designed and held specifically for suicide survivors—for a few reasons. Not only are these groups “among the most widely available type of support for survivors” and viewed by many as “an essential part of working through bereavement following suicide” (Cerel et al., 2009, p. 272), but several studies and surveys show that survivors do find suicide-specific support groups helpful. For example, Cerel et al. discovered that, “Of those who attended survivors’ support groups, 94% found them to be moderately to highly helpful” (2009, p. 271), and Jeffrey Jackson describes support groups as “one of the most valuable resources for suicide survivors” in his handbook for fellow survivors, written after the loss of his wife, Gail (2003, p. 28)—and Jackson is right. 

Support groups are incredibly valuable. First, “For many survivors, participation in support groups is felt to be their only access to people who they feel can understand them, or the only place where their feelings are acceptable, thus providing them with their only means of catharsis” (Tal Young, 2012, p. 182). But, even the survivors with the strongest of support systems benefit from the “sense of identification” that suicide-specific groups produce (Cerel et al., 2009, p. 272), as “[t]he universality of [the participants’] experiences provides great reassurance” (Tal Young, 2012, p. 182). 

Aside from sharing stories and feelings, “individuals may receive helpful suggestions for taking care of real-life obligations such as dealing with estates and legal issues”; while this advice from “veteran” survivors is beneficial on its own, it also serves as a helpful reminder that others “have ‘survived’ the suicides of their own loved ones” and are now able to help their fellow survivors over the same hill. Finally, suicide-specific bereavement groups “provid[e] accurate information, permission to grieve, [and] normalization of affects and behaviors that may be totally out of keeping with the person’s usual state,” which are all undeniably validating and important for a grieving individual to have. (Tal Young, 2012, p. 182)

With that said, support groups are a formal intervention that some survivors may not be comfortable attending and using throughout the bereavement process. Accordingly, the remaining suggestions provided by our website are informal interventions, beginning with media representation.

From books and songs to movies and TV shows, media representation is incredibly important. As humans, it’s comforting to listen to, hear, or see a character experience something that you can relate to, and thus, “it is vital to amplify the voices and share the stories of all” through the media (Race to a Cure, 2021). For suicide survivors, especially, their stories have long been shied away from, and thus, media which explores their lived experiences is desperately needed—both to provide comfort and validity to the bereaved, but also, in America's death-averse culture, sharing the chronicles of suicide survival can improve public awareness and capability to handle such an important yet sensitive issue. As such, we have provided a short-list of songs, movies, and TV shows which depict and explore suicide survival.

In particular, the song suggestions may be distinctly helpful to those grieving, as there is “a foundational relationship that exists between bereaved people and music,” which is often not the case with other types of media (DiMaio & Economos, 2017, p. 66). While there are various uses of music during the grieving process, and "there is not one music experience that will magically help people 'feel better'" (DiMaio & Economos, 2017, p. 73), all of the songs listed on the website were written by suicide survivors; hence, listening to these tracks may provide suicide survivors with a sense of comfort, knowing their feelings are valid and shared among those who have also experienced such a difficult loss. 

The final informal intervention suggested by our website is that of personal narratives. In a sense, personal narratives are very similar to suicide-specific support groups, as it involves the sharing of individual stories and experiences. However, for those who are uncomfortable or simply cannot attend bereavement groups, reading the stories of those who have also lost family members, friends, and acquaintances to suicide can provide as much, if not more, comfort and validity, reminding them that they are not alone in this experience, even if they are physically alone. 

In conclusion, then, A Survivor’s Source serves as a compilation of resources for those bereaved by suicide. Although it is not exhaustive nor flawless, our website is a giant step in the right direction. Within the community of suicide survivors, an easy, uncomplicated way for survivors to access and receive the help they may need—whether formally (support groups) or informally (media representation and personal narratives)—has long been missed, as studies have shown just how important it is to “connect [survivors] with services they are most open to” (Honeycutt & Praetorius, 2016). Hopefully, A Survivor’s Source satisfies this need.