Franklin Cook's blog

New research is going beyond the current understanding of Complicated Grief (CG) to explore additional factors that might play a role in assessment and treatment of the malady, which may affect 10 to 20 percent of bereaved people. For instance, according to findings recently published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychiatry, there is

... important preliminary evidence that persons suffering from Complicated Grief are less able to flexibly enhance and suppress their expressions of emotion compared to asymptomatic bereaved and nonbereaved adults.

At a brainstorming session among national leaders of the suicide survivor community and other experts, which SAVE organized this spring in Portland, one need identified as being of utmost importance was, as Kim Ruocco of TAPS put it,

We need to know more about what about a support group makes it healing.

Ruocco's declaration was echoed repeatedly by others during the Portland meeting, and a recently completed review of 20 years of literature on peer-support services in the mental health field emphatically confirms the need for more and better research on support groups:

A recent Open to Hope Radio interview -- "Helping Families Deal with Suicide" -- features Diana Sands of the Bereaved by Suicide Centre for Intense Grief in Australia.

Sands suggests that "there is no one correct way" to talk children about suicide loss and that "it's a process, not an event."

This is a conversation you will have with your child for the rest of your life ... Research would suggest that it's important to provide honest, age-appropriate explanations about what has happened.

In "Studying the Positive Side of Trauma and Grief," Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Stacey Burling takes a look at a key concept that is currently getting a lot of attention in grief and trauma research. The concept is that, after a tragedy, "most people bounce back to baseline, and some emerge from disaster stronger and better, at least in some ways." Those who discover new, sometimes transformational, characteristics within themselves after a tragedy are experiencing "what psychologists call posttraumatic growth (PTG), the lesser-known sibling of post-traumatic stress disorder." 

The field of suicide bereavement support got a boost late last year with the publication of a groundbreaking book, Grief after Suicide: Understanding the Consequences and Caring for the Survivors, edited by John R. "Jack" Jordan and John McIntosh. Two recent interviews with Jordan offer a glimpse of the new book.