Week of December 7, 2002
Listen to this program now
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
