Week of December 7, 2002
For people who have lost a family member or friend to suicide, grief is often complicated by feelings of anger, shame, fear and guilt. Guests include Dr. Donna Barnes, president and founder of the National Organization for People of Color Against Suicide; Dr. David Clark, Director of the Center for Suicide Research and Prevention at Rush Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago; Dr. David Brent, professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine; Mary Kluesner and Al Kluesner, cofounders of Suicide Awareness: Voices of Education; and poet Stanley Kunitz, named United States Poet Laureate in 2000.
In an introductory essay, Dr. Fred Goodwin says that in thirty-five years of treating patients with depression and manic-depression he has only lost one patient to suicide. To this day, he says, he wonders if he could have done something to save her life. These are the same questions many suicide survivors ask. His work with patients who have lost family members to suicide and his experience losing a patient have taught him that suicide teaches us about the human desires to understand and to feel in control. This second need is so strong, he says, that sometimes survivors will take on the burden of life long guilt rather than admitting to their own inability to have prevented a suicide.
Every year, some 30,000 Americans die of suicide. Last year, one of those deaths was that of seventeen year old Kristin Strouse. She had been a talented artist and was a freshman at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Producer Dempsey Rice talked with Kristin Strouse's sister and mother, Kim Strouse and Sharon Strouse, and with her friend Betty Swindlehurst. "It just cracks you open," says Sharon Strouse. Seven months after her sister's death, Kim Strouse says "I don't think fifteen or twenty minutes go by without me thinking about her and how this has changed my life." Kim says she feels angry and frustrated but "below the anger and frustration is sadness... I just miss her."
Next, Dr. Donna Barnes and Dr. David Clark join Dr. Goodwin to talk about surviving suicide. Twelve years ago, Dr. Barnes lost her son, Marc Jamal Barnes, to suicide. Dr. Barnes is founder and president of the National Organization for People of Color Against Suicide (NOPCAS). Dr. David Clark is professor of psychiatry and the director of the Center for Suicide Research and Prevention at Rush Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago. The mourning process that follows a suicide is usually a much more complex process than bereavement from other kinds of death, says Dr. Clark. The sense of surprise, violence, and stigma often associated with suicide make the grief complicated. The death is likely to be especially traumatic for a survivor who discovers the body. Most suicide survivors, he says, have a strong desire to pinpoint a cause for the suicide, and that's not often possible. Dr. Barnes says that with the death of her son she began "on a path of searching for answers." She says it's important for survivors to figure out why a suicide happened and "you search and you search and you search until you feel comfortable." Since 1980 the rate of suicides among African-Americans between the ages of 15 and 19 has more than doubled. But Dr. Barnes says that suicide survivors in African-American communities often encounter an assumption among other African-Americans that suicide "is a white thing" and resistance to talking about it. Through NOPCAS, she puts together educational seminars in African-American communities that encourage discussion of suicide and awareness of risk factors. Dr. Clark points out that "It's important not to impose a cookie cutter approach" to healing from a suicide. Avenues that suicide survivors have found helpful include support groups for suicide survivors, books and other educational materials, professional counseling, and talking with friends.
To contact Dr. Donna Barnes or learn more about National Association for People of Color Against Suicide, visit the NOPCAS web site.
To contact Dr. David Clark, write to Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center 1650 W. Harrison St. Chicago, Ill. 6061. Or call (312) 942-5000
Stanley Kunitz was named U.S. Poet Laureate in 2000. The Infinite Mind's Emily Fisher interviews him in his home. In his poem "The Portrait," Kunitz describes an incident connected with his father's suicide. The poem recounts an incident in which he discovered a pastel portrait of his father, who died a few months before Stanley Kunitz was born. "It's really a portrait of all three of us. My mother, my father, and myself," says Kunitz. The poem begins "My mother never forgave my father/ for killing himself/ especially at such an awkward time/and in such a public place." Click here to read "The Portrait" in its entirety. Stanley Kunitz's most recent book is his Collected Poems, in which "The Portrait" is included.
To contact Stanley Kunitz, write to him care of W.W. Norton& Company at 500 Fifth Avenue New York, N.Y. 10110.
Click here to order any of Stanley Kunitz's books, including Collected Poems.
Then, Dr. Goodwin interviews Dr. David Brent, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Immediate family members of people who die of suicide are four to six times more likely to die of suicide than people without a suicide. Depression and alcoholism are both risk factors for suicide. When they occur together, the risk for dying of suicide is six or ten times higher than the general population's. Both depression and alcoholism have strongly genetic bases. Also implicated is a personality characteristic, a tendency towards impulsive aggression, which also has a genetic basis. While clusters of suicides seem to point to a strong role for suicide contagion, Dr. Brent says that through his research he has found that friends of adolescent suicide victims were less likely to imitate a suicide than peers who were more on the periphery of the victim's world. He says that seeing and feeling the pain that suicide causes seems to have a preventative effect on this group. However, friends do not have an easier time of it than family members. While parents of suicide victims had the hardest time dealing with a suicide, friends of teenagers who died of suicide had a worse time, three years down the road, than siblings. This may be because there are fewer formal outlets for their grief. Another factor may be that adolescents who take their own lives may have tended to associate with other troubled teens. He says that support groups and individual counseling for these survivors may decrease their risks for developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression.
To contact Dr. David Brent write to him at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, 3811 O'Hara Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15213. Or click here to reach him by e-mail or learn more about his work.
Next, Dr. Goodwin interviews Al Kluesner and Mary Kluesner, who lost a daughter, Amy Kluesner, and a son, Michael Kluesner, to suicide. Mary and Al Kluesner are cofounders of Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (SAVE), an organization that works to prevent suicides by educating the public about depression. Mary Kluesner says that she did not know about depression in the years before Amy took her own life, and did not recognize some of the things Amy was going through as signs of depression. These signs included persistent fatigue, listlessness, and joylessness. Michael Kluesner, on the other hand, had access to excellent medical care, but the combination of depression and drug addiction took a toll that he and the mental health professionals were ultimately not able to halt. SAVE's national campaign includes billboards with "eloquently blunt" messages: "See your doctor. Treat depression. Prevent Suicide," and "The number one cause of suicide is untreated depression."
To reach SAVE or Mary and Al Kluesner write to Suicide Awareness Voices of Education Minneapolis, MN 55424-0507 or call (952) 946-7998. To e-mail SAVE or learn more about depression, surviving suicide, and suicide prevention, visit the web site for SAVE
In the show's concluding commentary, producer Emily Fisher talks about surviving her mother's death to suicide. "I'm a suicide survivor," she begins, "but before I was a suicide survivor, I was a suicide survivor watcher." She recalls the summer she was ten, when she learned that a girl she knew had lost her mother to suicide. She scrutinized the girl from a distance, wondering if her mother's suicide was the reason why she was so pale, or why her older brother was so obnoxious. "To me," says Fisher, "she was 'the girl whose mother had committed suicide,' the tragic girl, the girl who was somehow irrevocably different than me." Ten years later, her own mother died of suicide. Now, she says, "Some days, I'm still "the girl whose mother died of suicide," she says, "but some days it's just one thing about me." She guesses it was probably just one thing about the girl she had once watched from a distance.
For more information on surviving suicide, contacting support groups for suicide survivors in your area, call 1-800-SUICIDE (1-8900-784-2433 or contact the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) . You can write to AFSP at 120 Wall Street, 22nd Floor New York, New York 10005 You can reach ASP toll-free at 888-333-AFSP.
If you are in an immediate crisis and considering suicide, experts advise calling 911. If you would like to learn more about depression or speak to a counsellor now call 1-800-SUICIDE.
you are considering cide and in imminent crisis, experts advise calling 911. Alternately, call 1-800-SUICIDE and reach a counsellor now.-- Emily Fisher
