There are few human behaviors that cause the kind of horror and anxiety that suicide does. This becomes even more striking during the holiday season, a time of joyfulness, good cheer, and family togetherness. However, in families where there has been severe marital strife, separation and recent divorce, the holidays underline the aloneness and loneliness of the individual. It is the time of the year when one may become very aware of an increased sense of loneliness. As a result, the suicide rate is extremely high. While everone else is celebrating the holidays, the lonely person may remove themselves totally by the untimate act of separation.

In our experience at Barr-Harris with 19 cases of suicide, marital conflict and discord were present in every case.

The family's main reaction to a suicide is shame and guilt, so that there is secretiveness and distortion. There is elaborate denial and the act is rationalized as an accident, being drunk, confused, overly medicated or influenced by others.

Children may indeed "not know" how the parent died and they may not find out the truth until they become adults. The surviving parent, out of a sense of guilt, will not tell the child. As a result, the child may hear rumors, secret conversations or innuendos.

If the child knows how the parent died, they will feel very angry at the parent for having removed themselves consciously and deliberately from their presence. The child may then show two patterns of behavior. There may be sadness, guilt-ridden withdrawal, and isolation, or the child may be a hostile, angry and defiant against the world. The two positions may be combined or may alternate in the same child.

The child's trauma may be much greater if the parent threatened to kill himself or if the child was the first to discover the body. In such cases, the child may not only mourn the loss but he may also show a post-traumatic stress disorder. Such a combination makes the treatment extremely difficult.

A suicide is a permanent skeleton in the family closet. For years to come, the family will feel guilty and will try to learn the reason why. If the loss is denied and not addressed, there is always the danger that the child will behave in self-destructive ways and will do something similar when he reaches the same age as the parent that died.

The first and most important step in any intervention is to tell the child accurately about what happened in an honest and forthright way. Until that is done, any other intervention is not possible.