Suicide Grief in Children and Adolescents - Telling Children about a Death by Suicide

Finding an age-appropriate response to the truth of the cause of death is the direction that most experts will advocate there is no need to go into the details of the death but speaking in broad terms in child friendly language is important. [...] If a child is not told of the suicide and finds out later, they will “re-grieve”, they will cycle back through their grief experience and relive it all over again as they reshape their view of the deceased and those who did not tell them the truth. [...] When the death is a result of suicide children too suffer under the stigma of the cause of death. [...] The child will come to a period where they will attempt to re-organize their life in response to the family changes, and again one might see this primarily in shifts in play. [...] As the child moves through the developmental levels they will come to understand the death differently and will cycle back and appear to grieve all over as the impact of the loss hits them at deeper and broader levels.