Often, adults agonize over what to tell children when somebody in the child’s family dies by suicide. The question becomes even more painful when the person who dies by suicide is a young child’s mother or father. But the suicide of a beloved sibling, aunt, uncle, grandparent or other person in the family’s life can also be devastating.
Some parents or other family members may want to hide the cause of death. They want to protect children – protect them from blaming themselves and from asking the same devastating questions that often plague adult survivors of suicide: Why did they leave me? Why wasn’t I a good enough reason to stay alive? What could I have done differently?
How Hiding Suicide Can Hurt Children
Family members who cover up a suicide have good intentions, but their secrecy and deception might cause unintentional harm. By hiding suicide, adults risk invalidating children’s reality, perpetuating the stigma of suicide, and leaving children alone with a truth that they may discover elsewhere, like from other kids in the neighborhood.
For these reasons, and more, mental health professionals and many survivors of suicide themselves widely agree that children should be told the truth, even though the truth is painful. Michael F. Myers, a psychiatrist, and Carla Fine, both of whom are survivors of suicide, state:
With children, honesty about suicide is not only the best policy, it is the only policy. You must tell your children the truth in an age-appropriate manner from the beginning, no matter how young they are.
Children are exquisitely sensitive to their environments. In cases where adults withhold the truth, children may sense that they are being lied to, adding to feelings of betrayal and grief.
As I noted in another post on keeping suicide secret, children might already know more than the adults around them think. I once read a devastating account about Frank Campbell, PhD, executive director of a crisis intervention center in Louisiana. This story comes from the excellent book for suicide survivors, Touched by Suicide: Hope and Healing After Loss:
A 5-year-old boy’s mother came to Dr. Campbell seeking grief counseling for her son. The boy’s father had died by suicide. The mother insisted that Dr. Campbell not tell her son that his father had died by suicide. She said she needed to protect him. Dr. Campbell reluctantly agreed.
When he met privately with the boy, the child told him his father had killed himself. He added: “But please don’t tell my mommy,” the boy entreated. “She thinks my daddy died in a car accident.”
And there’s another point I made in that post that bears repeating:
Children figure things out, whether now or later. If suicide is kept secret, one of many messages children might absorb is that suicide is so shameful that it has to be denied.
Telling Children the Truth about Suicide
Talking truthfully to children about suicide also means giving the full context of why suicide occurs – because a person’s mind is is overwhelmed with sickness, stress, pain, or something else out of the ordinary. And the condition or situation causes them to make sad, painful decisions that they wouldn’t otherwise make.
Suicide can seem like the ultimate abandonment for a child. Children need to understand that they didn’t cause the suicide. They also need to know that they couldn’t have prevented it.
When Spalding Gray, an accomplished writer and performance artist, died by suicide, his wife told her children the truth, according to the book Touched by Suicide:
I tell my children that suicide is an unhealthy state of mind versus a healthy state. That their father’s suicide was not done to them, that he killed himself to end his feelings of pain, not to cause pain to them.
In another case, the book Suicide: An Unnecessary Death describes a father of young children who struggled how to tell them that their mother had died by suicide. In a meeting with his therapist and his wife’s family, the family told the children that their mom had died of a “brain attack”:
That is, the depression clouded her thinking and she was unable to see any other way to solve her problem, likening suicide to a heart attack in which one’s heart fails to function properly.
Listening to Children After Suicide
Another important concern for children is to give them space to voice their reactions to the suicide – all of those reactions.
Many times, children blame the suicide on themselves. They may have said something mean to the person who died or even wished for the person to die. It is important to allow the child to talk freely about their feelings of self-blame.
The child may feel very angry with the adult who died by suicide. It’s important to make clear that such anger is not only acceptable, but also normal. Whatever feelings the child experiences, try to listen without judgment.
That’s the experts’ advice in a nutshell: Children need to be told about a loved one’s suicide, and they need to be heard, as well.
© 2013 Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW. All Rights Reserved. Written for Speaking of Suicide. Photos purchased from Fotolia.com.
So, my step daughter asked why she doesn’t ever see her uncle (who committed suicide). I told her her uncle is no longer with us because he hurt himself and if I know my brother he’d be regretting it every day now looking down on us. He was very sad and I wish he knew how many people around him would have loved him through it. I told her a year ago to date, and her mother is now mad about this, but was not then. I just want a professionals opinion. Did I explain wrong?
Anonymous,
I hate to get in the middle of a disagreement between a mom and step-mom, so I’ll keep this brief.
I think the words you used to describe it were well chosen. I love how you made it clear your brother was not himself.
An argument could be made for involving your step-daughter’s mother beforehand in your decision to share this information, for the reasons I describe above. Without knowing the dynamics of the family, the age of the child, the circumstances, it’s hard to know. But it was your brother, not hers, and to me (with the information available) it seems unrealistic to expect you to lie about your brother’s death.
I’m very sorry for your loss!
I dont agree. I dont think a seven year old boy can grasp or absorb that information. The message that goes out is…Daddy didnt love us. A parent will find the age appropriate age when the child can.process the information. It’s wrong.
I know, it seems scary for a child to know their parent died by suicide. As you note, it’s very possible that the child will think, “Daddy didn’t love me.” However, the surviving parent can make clear that this is not the case. The article draws from some good examples of how to do so. In particular, I like the case where the family told the child that the parent had suffered a sort of “brain attack,” in which the illness of depression caused the suicide.
Keep in mind that the experts also say to tell children in an age-appropriate way. So, with a young child, the surviving parent might tell a child that their other parent died of an illness called depression.
One of the people who come to mind when I’m considering suicide, is my 3 year old nephew. He loves me so much, and I him. I would never want my sister to have to tell him that I was so sad that I ended up making the pain go away. I can imagine him going to his room and just sitting there, silent. Then eventually crying and asking questions and giving his opinions.
Family is the only reason I won’t go through with killing myself.
I’m sorry you consider suicide, I hope someone is helping you with that. I pray you learn to love yourself and find happiness and peace.
hello, my name Elijah i am 13 and there is just to many things going on at my school i just want to be free from all of this mental and phisical pain
Elijah, please ask someone for help! Please tell your parents. Tell a teacher at school. Tell anyone. And if that person does not help, tell someone else. Please. There are other ways to be free of mental and physical pain – or, at least, to learn to cope and feel better in spite of such pain – besides ending your life.
If you live in North America, you can start with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1.800.273.8255 (TALK). I hope you will at least call them. What do you have to lose?
I called them and they helped the police track me and then I was imprisoned against my will to a mental institution for 12 days before being released and handed a bill for $23,000
Please dont…my son commited suicide 5 years ago and i can not recover from his loss. Please reach out to your parents or call a hotline to help you through this. Things will get better, i promise.
You need help kid. Reach out for help. Life is beautiful.
Please don’t do it. You have something to offer the world. Even if you don’t realize it.
This is so true. My husband died of suicide a year ago and I had to tell our 8 year old son. I didn’t hide it from him. He came to view Tom’s body with me and his big sister and we decorated his white coffin with messages and pictures of dinosaurs drawn with sharpies. The funeral was child centred, all decisions that my children wanted to make were made – including choosing the music and ordering a huge chocolate cake to be made. I don’t regret my honesty and openness with them one little bit and I honestly think that it has helped them deal with the most awful loss.
Tralou,
I’m horrified that I’m just now seeing this comment from you, while reviewing the post many years later. Very belatedly, I want to thank you for sharing your story. You illustrated exactly how disclosure can be done in a way that fosters honesty, closeness, trust, and healing. Thank you for sharing! And, also belatedly, I’m sorry for your loss.