We’ve spent the majority of our podcast covering suicide prevention.  This week, we’re focusing on mourning the loss of someone to suicide. Particularly,  we’re looking at feelings of grief when someone dies of suicide. We have a special guest with us this week, Whitcomb Terpening. Whitcomb is a Licensed Clinical Social Work Supervisor, a doctoral student at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Founder and Lead Therapist of the Semicolon Group (PLLC).  The Semicolon Group works exclusively with suicide and is the only practice of its kind in the US.

Grief is a normal part of mourning any death.  However, when someone dies of suicide, grief may be complicated by feelings of guilt, responsibility, anger, or shame.  Society frowns on discussing suicide. This may leave those who are already grieving a suicide even more isolated. Additionally, there is often a faulty idea of a “timeline” by which we should be done grieving. Many people may expect to move through the stages of grief in a steady progression and sometimes get focused on the “right way” to grieve.  For more on this check out this week’s blog, “Is There a Right Way to Grieve?”