Working with a Student of Parent Suicide

Blog post by Natalya Cordero

On Friday, February 12^th at the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) Annual Convention in New Orleans, LA, I attended a session entitled Helping Children Cope in the Aftermath of a Parent’s Suicide. It was presented by Suzanne Bennett and Melissa A. Heath from Brigham Young University. Their focus was disseminating information that would be helpful for counseling students who have gone through the traumatic event of losing a parent to suicide.  This was particularly applicable to me as I have worked with a child whose parent had completed suicide. Most of the information I found while researching this topic in order to help this student were focused on death in general and not specifically suicide. This discovery was backed up by Bennett and Heath, who confimed that there are few resources for children of parent suicide, which was partly what led them to researching specific ways of helping these students. I was appreciate of the specific focus of their discussion as well as very practical information that they relayed in their presentation.

Included in the practical information was a list of books you can use: full list below. 

One of the biggest things I learned from this session was a brief remark that Dr. Heath made at the beginning of the presentation. This is not the first research that Dr. Heath has presented suicide in general and she mentioned at the beginning that when talking about suicide, rather than saying someone “commits” suicide, it is more appropriate to say, “completes” suicide or that someone died by suicide. This is because of the negative connotations that are associated with the word “commits,” as we often use it in phrases such as “commits a crime” or “commits murder” which are seen in general society as wrong. Suicide is often the last resort for a person who feels they don’t have any other resources for help and we should not label them as “committing” some sort of wrongdoing.

There were varied counseling strategies that were presented in this session. Bennett and Heath had gathered their information from interviewing adults who had had a parent complete suicide when they were a child. They asked the adults 3 things: 1) What helped them as children when their parent completed suicide, 2) What didn’t help them as children when their parent completed suicide, 3) If specific resources (listed below) would have been helpful or unhelpful if they had had them when they were children. They also outlined what was helpful and unhelpful generally, in the immediate aftermath, and a year after the suicide happened. This allowed for a more specific analysis of what resources would be helpful at what time.

1)      What was helpful: Bennett and Heath outlined many things that were helpful for children whose parents had completed suicide. Among these were: having trusted people and space to talk about the suicide, remembering the developmental age of the child (i.e., allowing the student to process things at their level), having someone say, “It’s not your fault,” and individual counseling and therapy. They also appreciated, in the immediate aftermath, being allowed to grieve, being able to spend time with friends, having both emotional and practical support, and having some flexibility with school. A year after the suicide, the children of parent suicide found memorializing the death, having creative outlets, and family routines as being helpful parts of healing.

2)      What was not helpful: Bennett and Heath also outlined things that were NOT helpful for children whose parents had completed suicide. Among these were: having others ignore what happened, not being told about the suicide, being told too much or too little about the suicide, not talking about it, and having judgmental family members. Also unhelpful in the immediate aftermath was hearing half-truths and half-lies about the suicide, learning the death was a suicide from a friend, being exposed to too many details about the suicide, or having a lot of responsibility placed upon them. A year after the suicide, children of parent suicide found that remarriage (of the surviving parent), removal of all photos of the deceased parent, having an unavailable (either emotionally or physically) surviving parent, and/or losing connection with the deceased parent’s family not helpful at all.

3)      Resources found helpful by children of parent suicide: Below are the handouts with lists of memorializing activities, discussion topics, externalizing activities, and more. They also provided a list of books that would be helpful for children and teens in dealing with parent suicide. I thought these books were especially applicable for younger students who may have a hard time understanding what suicide is and need help processing their feelings. These books and activities were okayed (with notes of possible improvement on some) by the people that they interviewed.

I was also pleasantly surprised that Bennett and Heath were very upfront with the limitations of their study. They had a very small sample of those that they interviewed (5), which is why they urged school psychologists to be aware of the child’s age and their limitations and strengths in processing parent suicide. However, even having the resources that might be useful in assisting a student going through this is extremely helpful, since there is so little information about it to begin with. Although I wasn’t able to use their resources to assist my student, I am grateful to have the resources going forward so that I’ll be able to help students that have to go through the death of a parent by suicide.