Singer and entertainer Marie
Osmond recently released her new book, The Key is Love: My Mother’s
Wisdom and Daughter’s Gratitude. In the book, Osmond talks about
lessons she learned from her mother, as well as the trials she has faced in her
own life as a parent. Of these trials, Osmond writes intimately about the death
of her son, Michael, who died by suicide just over three years ago. She shares
that she had struggled with postpartum depression herself, which helped her
understand Michael’s death, despite the pain it brought her.
“[When you have depression,] you think that your life is better or everybody’s life is better off without you in it, and that is a lie, “Osmond. “There’s nothing better without the people you love in it.“
Throughout the book, Osmond highlights the importance of love to get through difficult situations. As she says, the piece of maternal wisdom she is most grateful for is "to love yourself."
You can find this book in the Alliance of Hope Bookstore.
by Susan Andersen
It was 9 months on January 13th since Ian left us. The 'whys" are now
whispers, the crashing waves of overwhelming grief and sadness further apart.
Although for the past few days I have been very depressed and even asked God to
"pick me" as the next one to die, I am beginning to look inward.
In Iris Bolton's book My Son, My Son, she describes a gift that came out of her son's death. Her life and calling were redefined over the years after his suicide. And so I begin my journey of introspection merging the memories of the past with the present and the future in order to discover my Gift from Ian.
Ian was honorable, kind, loving, caring and funny. His laugh was infectious. I will spend time looking back, but also talking with family and friends listening to how he made a difference in their lives. I am fortunate that one of his friends started a Facebook page and many of his friends have posted there. I will look at these postings, pictures and videos. I will absorb all of this information into my being in order to discover my Gift.
My son is gone and there is a huge hole in my heart. Overtime I hope to fill it with the Gift.
It was on January 13, 2003 that our daughter, Karla, found a hidden .22 caliber rifle and shot herself with what the coroner called a “perforating gunshot wound to the chest.” She was 26, charming, beautiful, intelligent, creative, three classes away from her BA in English literature with a bright future ahead. And she was dead.
Sometimes, that’s what bipolar disorder does. Like cancer, bipolar disorder can be fatal.
I was shocked, but not surprised, when a Shiloh, IL police officer knocked on our door and told us that “Karla Smith has died.” That’s all he knew, but I knew immediately that, on that fateful, dreary Monday in January, she died by suicide in Tulsa. The previous Friday she was released (against our wishes) from a Behavioral Treatment center in Tulsa where she had spent 10 days recovering from a severe episode of depression.
She needed more time in treatment but for reasons we still don’t know, they released her. There are many regrets that accompany a suicide. My biggest regret is not flying to Tulsa that weekend to be with her as she began her aggressive outpatient program. She sounded “ok” on the phone, so I didn’t go.
Could I have prevented her death if I had gone? I don’t know but I wish I had tried.
But that sense of regret is just one of the overwhelming emotions that often shadow the suicide of a loved one. It took time and difficult grief work to cope with all those new and intense feelings but we have learned that it is possible to get through those uniquely painful times and live a happy, healthy life again.
One of the things that helped me, my wife, Fran and our son, Kevin (Karla’s twin) cope with her death was born the night of her wake. There were hundreds of people from many parts of the country who attended the wake and they all knew how she died because we wrote the obituary in a way that indicated she died by suicide. Halfway through the long reception line, the three of us commented how many people said that their mother/brother/cousin/uncle either had a mental illness or who died by suicide. We knew then that we had to do something to help others who had experiences similar to ours.
It took us two years to decide what we would do, receive our non-profit status and begin to launch our services. We formed the Karla Smith Foundation (KSF) (www.KarlaSmithFoundation.org) with the mission to provide hope for a balanced life to the family and friends of anyone with a mental illness or who lost a loved one to suicide. We implement our mission through education, support and advocacy. We offer support groups, conferences, workshops, presentations, resources, website, and one on one coaching.
In 2005, our first support group had 2 people. We now have 5 full time or part time staff members. We sponsor 11 groups in 3 states, with more planned in the next few months. We offer peer to peer, mentoring opportunities, family connect activities, a program for veterans with PTSD, programs that focus on the parents of children and adolescents with mental health issues, and college campus based groups. We are soon to launch a program aimed at middle school and high school students, administrators and parents.
In order to specify our mission and philosophy, as well as to educate and encourage family and friends of anyone with a mental health problem or who lost a loved one to suicide, we wrote three books. The Tattered Tapestry: A Family’s Search for Peace with Bipolar Disorder tells the Smith family story of Karla’s illness and death. A Balanced Life: Nine Strategies for Coping with the Mental Health Problems of a Loved One offers practical help for families trying to deal with the mental illness of a member. The Unique Grief of Suicide: Questions and Hope provides hope for people grieving a suicide.
These three books, and the other materials and programs KSF provides, illustrate the practical approach, compassion, and resources we have so far created to support other families and friends who experience the mental illness and/or suicide of a loved one.
One of the things we learned while developing and offering the services of KSF is that helping others is gratifying in itself. The need is great. The help is needed. We do what we can. Want to join us?
Tom Smith retired as Director of Pastoral Services for the Diocese of Belleville and is a co-founder and President of the Karla Smith Foundation (www.KarlaSmithFoundation.org) whose mission is to provide hope for a balanced life for the family and friends of anyone with a mental illness or who lost a loved one to suicide. He joins his family and staff in offering support, education, and awareness programs which implement this mission.
He is also the author of seven books, the most recent of which is The Unique Grief of Suicide: Questions and Hope, multiple magazine articles, and a variety of columns. He enjoys sports, especially those teams that have St. Louis in their names, and his two young grandsons.
He can be reached at tom.smith@KarlaSmithFoundation.org.
by Turtle
Continue reading "Survivor Experience: Do We Really Have To Say Goodbye?" »
Writing about this beautiful young woman on their website, they said, "For six years, she grappled with a condition that started as low self-esteem and worsened into major depression. During this period she was given a variety of SSRI and other medications. She stuck with a single therapeutic mode and her prescribed medications even though the combination seemed to just make her worse. Finally, in desperation, she committed suicide."
They launched Helpguide (www.helpguide.org) in 1999, inspired by the belief that Morgan's death could have been avoided if reliable information had been there to give her a sense of hope. Today, Helpguide serves over 50 million people a year.
The Segals have gone beyond just surviving to reach out to others in a meaningful way. Robert, who has an engineering degree and a master's degree in Educational Psychology, and Jeanne, a psychotherapist whose work has helped individuals and families for nearly 40 years, work together on numerous local and national boards in service to others. Dr. Segal's books have been published in 13 languages, and her "focus is on how individuals can empower themselves and bring about life-altering social and emotional change."
HelpGuide.org covers such topics as mental health, healthy lifestyles, children and family, and aging well. This free resource offers information in easy-to-digest sections and includes videos and practical guides. In collaboration with Harvard Health Publications, HelpGuide.org offers free educational supplements.
For a free self-help toolkit to “Bring Your Life into Balance,” visit their Web site at http://helpguide.org/toolkit/emotional_health.htm.
For a listing of organizations that can connect you with public assistance, social services, and other health and human services, check http://helpguide.org/yellow_pages.htm.
by Dorothy Paugh
In the aftermath of recent murder-suicides, pleas for more … as well as fewer … guns have made the news. As the mother of a 25-year-old son who shot himself in April, I know this is a heated issue. I believe that individuals need to make informed personal decisions about whether or not to own a gun.
According to research, “for every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.
To put gun deaths in perspective, over 30,000 people die from intentional (excluding accidental) gunshots each year in the United States. Roughly 19,000 of these gun deaths are suicides. Four fifths of all suicides are male and just over half use a firearm. According to the most recent US Census Bureau data, guns are used to commit over 11,000 murders per year. That’s about two thirds of all murders.
Having a gun in the house more than doubles the risk of suicide for ALL who live there, according to researchers David Hemenway and Matthew Miller at the Harvard School of Public Health who wrote "Guns and Suicide in the United States" published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Suicide and murder are often impulsive acts done in a moment of extreme despair or anger. When overwhelming emotions intersect with such effective means, death happens. We are not likely to change human nature any time soon. Modern therapies have not made a dent in the statistics.
But if an opportunistically suicidal person is thwarted in their attempt, most do NOT go on to choose another means. The urge to die that took over in that terrible moment retreats, never to return with such compelling force. I suspect the same is true for murders that are crimes of passion.
What does work to reduce the death rate is limiting access to quick and easy methods, according to the article “The Urge to End It All” by Scott Anderson. The reason guns are singled out on the list of possible methods is their lethality. They are easy to get, easy to use and cause the least- survivable injuries. Since Australia enacted strict gun laws in 1996 in the wake of a mass shooting, suicides and murders have each declined approximately 60%. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/won ... australia/
Had my son not owned a gun, I believe he’d be alive today. Human beings are fragile and fallible, and guns do not allow for such frailties.
by Karin Vandermaar
What happens to our self-esteem when we lose a loved one to suicide? Perhaps you were the one who tried to help your son see the man he truly was and now wonder if you did enough. Maybe you didn’t recognize your daughter’s lack of self-esteem and are now kicking yourself for being unaware?
How we see ourselves is dependent upon emotions. Survivors feel complicated emotions that take us for the ride of a lifetime.
We want to get off the emotional roller coaster, yet all too often, when we think we’ve reached a point where we feel steady, the rails drop from under us again and away we go. It’s exhausting, it's relentless, and it affects us mentally and physically.
When I became a survivor, I noticed an impact on my self-esteem. I often wondered, “Did I do enough? How could I have failed to help my son?” Sometimes I started to speak but hesitated, thinking “Who am I to say anything? Why would anyone take my advice?”
Other survivors have shared they have similar feelings. In the aftermath of suicide, self-esteem can plummet. Fear and shame can take over our lives. In the midst of traumatic grief, it is difficult to manage the powerful thoughts generated by our brains, but we can try to change our perceptions.
In a meeting I attended recently, my coworker vented her mounting stress, “I could just shoot myself in the head.” She did not know my 25-year-old son had done that very thing just four months earlier, and that her loaded words inadvertently caused an upwelling of grief that left me shaking.
The World Health Organization estimates that roughly one million people complete suicide in both developed and developing countries each year. The worldwide suicide rate has increased 60% over the past five decades, with numbers of young people overtaking older males in one third of countries. Tens of millions more lives are affected taking into account those who attempt suicide. Add to that all those left behind to anguish over what they might have done over a lifetime to change the outcome for their lost loved one –and whose own risk for suicide has now increased-- and suicide becomes a major, largely unaddressed public health crisis.
My middle son Peter worked as a field technician doing research on surface and ground water quality, having graduated with honors with a B.S. in Environmental Science in 2009. Last year, he purchased a home with his girlfriend of five years. They spoke of marriage, but had not set a date. Peter had a sharp, disciplined mind and a quick wit that kept his friends and coworkers laughing. He suggested improvements in data collection and handling that left his supervisor in awe. He spent weekends in a group that hiked the Appalachian Trail. Peter was a vegetarian who cared for his many pets. Wherever we walked, he routinely picked up discarded plastic bottles to recycle.
Continue reading "Survivor Experience: Speaking of Suicide" »
By Anne Berenberg, PhD and Vicki Scalzitti
My teenage son lost his older brother to suicide earlier this year. He’s in school activities, has nice friends and a nice girlfriend—all wonderful things—but I’m so afraid something terrible will happen to him, too. I worry all the time, especially when he stays overnight at a friend’s house, and I need him to call me. How do I find the balance between overprotecting him and just letting him be a high school kid?
It is to be expected that parents feel vulnerable themselves and feel that their children are vulnerable after a death in the family, especially a death from suicide. And the teen years, when children are widening their orbit beyond the home, are challenging for most parents. So it’s very understandable that you feel anxious.
But there are many positives in this story. The fact that your younger son has friends, has a girlfriend, and is involved in activities are all indications that he is engaged in life, is connected to others, and has healthy, age-appropriate interests. These involvements suggest that he is managing this difficult time after his brother’s death well. And by recognizing that these are wonderful things, you are supporting him in doing what he needs to do to heal and grow. If he were to isolate himself, to be deeply sad most of the time, to find nothing in life that gave him joy, or if he were to get involved with drugs and/or alcohol, those could be signals that he’s not coping well and needs additional help.
However, it certainly is OK for parents to check in with their teens. Any parent wants to know where and with whom their teen is spending the night. It’s fine to ask a teen to check in before he settles down for the night at someone else’s house. It’s appropriate to want to meet his friends and to be able to talk to their parents. That’s not smothering, it’s putting in an extra layer of precaution that helps everyone feel more secure. If you can be matter-of-fact about these check-ins, not overdoing them by having too many in one evening or sounding panicky on the phone, your son can accept them as caring parenting. In the same way, clear rules about safe driving, respecting curfews, and not abusing substances help keep teens safe.
Continue reading "Helping Children: Keeping Tabs on Teens " »
