Grief Reactions and Suicide Bereavement in the Context of Stigma among Parents: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

Abstract

The lives of bereaved people may be adversely affected by suicide. Suicide-loss-survivors are at a higher risk of developing multimorbidities in the form of physical and mental health disorders like anxiety, post-traumatic-stress-disorder, an elevated risk of psychiatric treatment admission and suicide. The present study fills a critical gap in our scientific understanding of the grief response of parents who have lost a child to suicide. This study explored lived experiences of suicide-bereaved parents and the stigma attached to a suicide death. Purposive and snowball sampling was used to select participants. Three couples (6 parents) losing their children to suicide were recorded were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule. Transcribed interviews were analyzed from an interpretative phenomenological framework from which four themes were derived: (1) psychological thematic content of grief following suicide; (2) suicide and stigmatization; (3) themes of shame, guilt, and responsibility; (4) religion and suicide. According to the dual process model of bereavement, it is probable that participants were still oscillating between sense making and meaning making, implying that adjusting to bereavement is a complex and oscillating process.