Losing a Parent to Suicide: Using Lived Experiences to Inform Bereavement Counseling

The suicide of a parent has life-long consequences; few more traumatic scenarios exist, and counselors often struggle for ways to help their patients deal with its effects. No individuals understand the pain and life-altering effects of these tragedies better than children who have been victims of the suicide of a parent. Despite this, there are few texts that incorporate and evaluate the first-person accounts of these individuals while advancing a method for treating these patients. Losing a Parent to Suicide analyzes these stories of parent suicide and the subsequent grief and coping, discovering the strategies, methods and modes of therapy that have succeeded in empowering grief-stricken individuals to move beyond the trauma and rebuild their lives.