Berkeley Parents Network: Explaining Suicide

Berkeley Parents Network

Explaining Suicide

Berkeley Parents Network > Advice > Worries Big & Little > Explaining Suicide

Tell children about their dad's suicide?
Alameda County Crisis Counselling Center Reviews
Suicide Prevention
Related page: Advice about Death and Grieving

Tell children about their dad's suicide?

August 1999

My children's (12 1/2, 16) dad recently committed suicide as a result of bipolar illness (manic-depression.) Do I tell them he committed suicide? Do I tell them how he did it? Right now they just know he died and the medical examiner is determining cause of death. Now they're at greater risk of suicide -- what do I do about that? Thanks for your advice.

Call the Alameda County Suicide Prevention Hotline at 510.849.2212 and have them refer you to a Suicide Survivors Support Group Counselor asap. These people are wonderful and know their stuff. They have a 10 week group that is the most incredible resource.

My father killed himself when I was 29, 3 years ago. I did the above support group within 3 months of his death. Our group has been meeting once a month on our own now for 3 years and it's become much less informal, but we're a great souce of support for one another. We've seen us all go from being completely heartbroken to putting our lives back together and laughing and smiling.

I also would insist that you (and your children depending on what the above counselors advise) do EMDR therapy asap. This is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy and it succeeds in taking the charge off of traumatic memories and images such that your life isn't permanently disabled by them. The best such therapist in this area is Harriet Sage, LCSW at 510.527.6100. She's a certified trainer of this method and an excellent therapist. You can also get other referrals to therapists from www.emdr.org and calling the number listed, but Harriet's great and will be able to refer you so call her asap.

Your kids do not have to be at risk for suicide. They will need to understand it and get access to the tools to be sure they can live their lives in a much healthier manner than their father was able to. My mother and 2 of my 3 sisters and I have all done a combination of support group and EMDR therapy and we're all in a much better place now. Our lives are forever changed, but not in a hopeless way. We are all stronger than we've ever been and deeper people than we've ever been.

You will get through this. Surround yourself with the safe resources above as quickly as you can. Be VERY gentle with yourself and your family. And please write back to say how things are going.

To the parent asking about whether to explain their father's recent suicide to children. Probably the best idea would be to get some professional advice on this, and exactly how they will handle it depends on the children and what their relationship with their dad was like. There is a book called "After Suicide" by Hewett, which has a chapter on talking to children about suicide. The book says that you will have to talk to them about suicide, one way or another, and I think that's probably right.

My experience with this is having lost a brother to suicide about 11 years ago. He had a daughter who was under a year at the time, and I believe my sister-in-law told her when she was 8 or 9 years old. (Prior to that she simply said that he had died and was vague about specifics.) I plan to do the same with my own children who are still very young. I can't imagine that you can avoid telling your children about this (including the "how", if they ask), given their ages (12 1/2 and 16).

My sympathies to you and your children in this painful time. My niece is doing quite well, by the way -- she has plenty of friends and is doing well in school.

I'm so sorry - that is so sad for your children. At 12 and 16, they are old enough to be told what happened, and they should be told. They may suspect it anyway if their father was often unhappy in the past, and it may hurt them to find out later that you weren't fully honest with them. They may be curious about how it happened and I think if they ask you should tell them in as gently a way as possible. They may need some help coming to terms with their father's death. My father died when I was a teenager and even though I knew I wasn't directly responsible, for a long time I felt terrible that I hadn't done enough for him, hadn't loved him enough, if only I had been a better daughter... It's hard for children not to feel that they are somehow to blame when a parent dies.

When my son was 6, my ex attempted--and nearly succeeded at--suicide due to depression. I had shielded my son from her mental illness struggles prior to that time, but I decided at that point to give as much information as I could. Essentially, I used the opportunity to really talk about mental illness. I think this is crucial for a bunch of reasons. First, it's very important to dispell any impression a kid might have that he or she was responsible for the adult's actions. Section, as you so rightly pointed out, it is critical to inform the child of his or her own vulnerability in this area and equip them as much as possible with information about how to take care of themselves and how to get help. Take the shame out of if as much as you can--if your kid's dad had died of heart disease, wouldn't you want to teach them preventative care? Good luck.

There is a number for suicide prevention - crisis support services - (510) 849-2212 - emergency line or business line - (510) 848-1515. They have group and individual sessions and can answer and give support for families.

This is a very difficult situation. Whether or not to tell your kids the cause of death would probably depend on a number of things, emotional development, personal history (have there been other traumatic experiences?), etc. One problem with not telling them is that they may hear it from some unwitting family member or friend down the line. Telling them now in these formative years could influence them to think they are like their father in this regard and pre-dispose them to similar problems. It's also common for kids to think *they* are the cause of a parent's death. I wouldn't leave this decision to my feelings or intuitions. I'd definitely find a competent therapist who specializes in working with teens and discuss it with that person. (An aside: My experience is that finding a good therapist that can help you -- with whatever issue -- is not an easy task. It takes time and research and also your meeting with a few of them to get a sense of how you would work together. This costs money, but is well worth the investment. Therapists have strengths and weaknesses and should not be thought of as necessarily "equal" in their ability to help people.) I wish you well.

I am so sorry for your loss. How hard that must be for you to bear. My strong thought for your situation would be that you really need expert support here--get your family into therapy very soon. Just consider it grief counseling. I couldn't begin to suggest what to tell your kids about such an important, personal subject without knowing more about the details and your kids. All the best to you.

To the mother of the children whose father committed suicide, first of all, my condolences. My children's (about the same ages as yours) father made an unsuccessful attempt a few years ago. He, too, suffers from bi-polar disorder. He subsequently told the kids about the attempt. I've often wondered how I would have talked with them if his attempt had been successful.

This past summer, my younger son's soccer coach (father of 3 children) committed suicide. A group called PediatriCare provided a (free) grief-counseling group for the boys on the team (many of whom were also classmates); and I understand they also provide other services. The kids who attended the session (it was kids only) felt it was very helpful. Their phone number is (510) 531-7551. The address is 2540 Charleston Street, Oakland, CA 94602.

Dear X: I think it's important for your children to know the truth about their father's suicide. Even though it can be really painful to talk about, they deserve to understand what happened and why. It's not easy to explain suicide to young people, but I think it's important to try your best to be honest with them. I think it's sufficient to tell them that he committed suicide without going into the details of how he did it. That level of information is only appropriate if they indicate that they are ready/want to hear it.

Ten years ago, my brother committed suicide at age 35. At the time, I told my son, who was 4 years old, that his uncle had died in a car accident (in fact, he drove off a cliff). The topic of my brother's death continued to come up over the years. When my son was about 10, I gave him more specific information telling him that his uncle committed suicide as a way of seeking relief from desperate emotional pain for which he had been unable to find any other solution. More recently, a woman friend of mine who was terminally ill committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. Her ex-husband decided not to tell their children (ages 12 and 17) because he thought they would feel that their mother had abandoned them. The children knew she was dying, but her death was oddly sudden all the same. What remains in that family, two years later, is the sense of a secret in the closet. It's my belief that the denial of what happened (ostensibly to protect the children) will return to haunt those kids over and over.

There have been others close to my son who have died: of cancer, asthma, old age, and by murder. On each occasion, I tell him in an age-appropriate manner what happened and then we find ways to honor the memories and spirits of the dead. Suicide is, sadly, a common response to chronic mental illness. As a society, we are primitives in dealing with this issue. Shame and stigma are still attached to anyone who suffers from emotional or mental imbalances. I think it would be really important to remind your children that their father's death is not about them, but a result of his own internal anguish. Allowing them to know what really happened and then giving them time and space to grieve (in all its stages) will probably be the best antidote to any risk category this might place them in. I wish you courage and strength however you handle this situation.

re suicide of husband. First, my sincere condolences at this tragic loss. I am a nurse who worked in Psychiatry for many years at Langley-Porter, UCSF My first recommendation is to find a therapist who can work with you and the children individually and as a family. The decision to reveal the circumstances of his death is one that should be made by you with the help and guidance of the therapist. The timing is an issue and exactly how much you want to share. Sometimes this happens in stages as the children want and need more information. You will all need support through this process...the greiving and other feelings such as guilt and anger that will naturally come up. Bipolar disorder is a difficult and high risk illness and you are not alone in dealing with the wake of this heartbreaking disease. Know that it is a disease and what happened was not your fault nor is there anything you could have done to change things. I wish you well in your recovery and in moving ahead with your life.

Tell your kids the truth. They will find out eventually and you will lose their trust if you haven't told them the truth. Every time I hear of suicide on TV on in the newspapers I tell my kids that they are not allowed to kill themselves. I tell them to get help from an adult they trust or that I will pay a therapist.

As someone whose mother committed suicide when I was 11, I think it is important to tell children the cause of death upfront. My father waited years to tell me and my sister, and that increased the stigma for us. As for the how, I would tell them if they ask, but wait until they do. Probably just hearing that their father killed himself will be plenty to take in at once.

As for your children being more at risk to kill themselves, it is my firm belief that the risk is intensified by the level of secrecy and shame. So the more you can talk about the situation honestly, the less they will have to wonder about themselves. Also get them some therapy now.....that will help alot. I haven't seen the research but I bet that once children of suicides have children themselves, the risk of their committing suicide goes way down...they know how awful it is for the survivors. There are some good books about children and traumatic deaths....the main point, and this is reinforced by my experience, is that the shame and guilt of the surviving adults makes the death far more traumatic. One last thing: Because my mother killed herself, people were uptight about talking about her. So her death defined her life. None of the adults in my life ever helped me to understand her life, and what would lead her to take it. So try, in your pain, to remember their father by more than his last act.

My heart goes out to you and your children. I wish I had more to contribute to help you. The main thing I want to say is that illnesses like Bipolar Disorder are frequently fatal, just the same way that other "physical" illnesses like cancer are. People sometimes think that mental illnesses are less valid, or think that since they are "just in the mind" that they shouldn't be taken seriously. But those illnesses kill people just as surely as cancer does.

As far as your children being at increased risk, there is still alot unknown about how heredity works with Bipolar Disorder. Most family members never develop any form of the illness. Your children's best bet is to educate themselves about the illness, and for other family members to be vigilant about noticing any early symptoms. There is much new research being done in this area, and it is really possible that in the next few years there could be new treatments that are more effective. The best way to keep up with these issues might be through NAMI, a grassroots organization devoted to mental health, they have a website at http://www.nami.org/. My best wishes are with you.

My son's father committed suicide (as the result of manic depression) when my son was 20 months old. I got professional advice and ended up writing about that incorporated our experience. The main advice is tell the truth! Tell them in age-appropriate terms, in ways you can add to later. If you don't tell them now, someone will tell them later, and they'll feel you betrayed them by not being forthright. Your kids are old enough to understand death and mental disease, and I would be frank. My son was so young that I've had to really start slowly, at his level, but from the beginning he knew that daddy's "body doesn't work anymore," that daddy won't come back, that some people die from accidents, some from illness, that illness can be of the body or of the mind, that daddy had an illness that made his mind unable to function normally. His illness made him feel that suicide was a way to deal with his problems, but that it is NOT a normal, proper way. Not talking about death - esp. suicide - is a sure way to induce guilt and shame. And sooner or later someone else will tell your kids, and they'll be vulnerable and surprised, may even deny the statement about their dad, which will possibly lead to taunting and teasing. My goal has been to make daddy's suicide another fact of our life. If someone brings it up to my kid, he can say, "I know," without generating any teasing. In fact, my son at 8, sometimes brings it up himself, matter-of-factly. Of course, he didn't know his dad well, doesn't remember him, doesn't remember the trauma at the time. Your kids have more attachment. I definitely recommend all of you getting some therapy, and the suicide survivors group thru Berkeley hot line is really good. I was also told to let my grief show, to admit that this was traumatic, because my kid would feel that something was wrong anyway, and to deny it would only confuse him. But I had to save my "falling apart" for times away from him. He needed (still does) to know that I am basically ok, that we will survive, that I can handle life from here on out. His very existence depends on that! I would be more than happy to talk to you in person/on phone. This is very difficult, I know. Talking helps. Call anytime. Linda

My sister committed suicide just before my first child was born, so I have thought about this question a lot. My daughter is only three, so now is not the right time, but there will come a time that is right and I made a commitment to be honest about it because there is a good deal of denial in my family about depression. Presently, she knows she had an aunt that is in many family pictures who died at age 28 because she was sick. Curiously enough, my daughter is very interested in death at her age.

There is much good literature available on surviving suicide, and the county offers grief support groups for people who have had a loved one commit suicide. You can call the suicide prevention hotline for the number - its in the book. I recommend the grief groups because suicide is such a unique and devastating loss. Churches also offer grief counselling groups. There might be something you could attend as a family. Ultimately your kids will want to know how their father died, and the truth is the best policy.

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