Communities asked to reach out to grieving families of suicides fearful of stigma

Some 75,000 Irish people are profoundly affected by suicide, "a huge chunk of the population", and very little is being done …

Some 75,000 Irish people are profoundly affected by suicide, "a huge chunk of the population", and very little is being done for them, a suicide awareness seminar in Tralee has been told.

The seminar was organised by Rotary International and was addressed yesterday by leading American professionals on suicide.

"Six people are profoundly affected by every suicide," Dr Edward Dunne, psychologist and president of the American Foundation of Suicidology said.

The number of suicides in Ireland has escalated in the past 25 years. In 1977, for example, there were 151 deaths from suicide, leading to a rate of 4.6 for every 100,000 persons; in 1998 there were 504 suicides, a rate of 13.6, and in 1999 the number taking their own lives was 439, or a rate of 11.7. It was fair to say that 75,000 Irish people have been affected by suicide over the past 25 years, and were still carrying a burden that was little understood, he said.

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There has been a huge increase in the numbers of young men taking their own lives, something not noted outside Ireland, Dr Dunne said.

"When a suicide happens in a community, particularly if it's very public, it sometimes makes other people suicidal." In high schools in the US the danger of a cluster of suicides was "very real".

Father Charles T. Rubey said grief from suicide was different from any other form of grief. It was uncontrollable, lengthy, "like being on a ship that is washed around in a storm". Unless one has been bereaved oneself from a suicide, it was impossible to understand, he said. Father Rubey founded the support group LOSS in Chicago (Loving Outreach to Survivors of Suicide) in 1979.

"People's lives are unalterably changed because of a death from suicide," he said.

"The opportunity to grieve openly as well as to join support groups was a vital step in learning to deal with suicide," he said.

In 21 years, Father Rubey said, he had not encountered one note that fully explained why a suicide occurred. "Whenever there is a suicide there are a lot of questions. Questions that often remain unanswered. Ultimately people have to live with the uncertainty. "Suicide needs to be understood as a death that is caused by illness." People didn't take their lives because they wanted to, but because they were in indescribable pain, he said.

"The community and the church should reach out to families where there has been a suicide because they feel stigmatised, unwelcome and labelled as failures. "Forty years ago the church removed suicide from the realm of morality and placed it where it belongs in the medical field. The church removed the stigma. It is up to society to remove it now," Father Rubey said.