Supporting someone bereaved by suicide

Be available, visible and supportive. This support is particularly important from family, community and spiritual leaders.

Try not to stigmatise suicide by shaming and blaming people. Try not to judge. It isn’t helpful to gossip about the person who has died or the family affected. This is an important time to practice unconditional love. Let them know they are loved and cared for. Creating stigma and drama doesn’t help healing. High stigma also means that people thinking of taking their own life may be too ashamed to admit it or to seek help. Affirm that no-one is to blame and address issues of guilt and responsibility.

They need to know they don’t have to go through it alone. People offering support might feel overwhelmed as well. Offer a shoulder to lean on. This is the time to show up, take them food and offer to help.

Ask people how they are going and remember to do this with children too. Ask in age-appropriate ways.

Talk about the loss to give other people permission to do that too. Talk to children and close family members early on so they don’t hear about it second-hand. Skylight has helpful guidelines and resources about how to talk with children and young people.

Be ready to talk about the loss many times. People will be processing what happened and trying to make sense of it.

People grieve differently and experience many emotions: shock, denial, numbness, disbelief, stress, shame, anger, despair and overwhelming sadness. This is all normal. Make sure you take some time and space to care for yourself as well as others. People grieve for as long as they need to and often experience painful reminders and setbacks. Sometimes shock and numbness means that grief reactions take a while to be felt. Helpful information about grieving for children, young people and family can be found on the Skylight website.

Help them with maintaining normal routines, check on eating and sleeping patterns.

After a suicide, there’s a heightened risk of suicide from those impacted by the grief of the death. Know which groups of people are particularly at risk.

Ensure people get all the help and support they need from professionals. Ensure you also have support. If you are the main support person, it might help if you let the person know you’re getting support too, so they don’t worry about the stress you might be under.

Download our factsheet about grieving (PDF, 360KB) which includes information about what grief is, what it looks like, practical advice for coping with grief and where to get help when grief doesn’t go away.