Grief and suicide

Millar, Becky 2025. Grief and suicide. Cholbi, Michael and Stellino, Paolo, eds. The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Suicide, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Item availability restricted.

PDF - Accepted Post-Print Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (369kB)

Abstract

According to extant philosophical literature, grief is not a straightforward emotional episode like sadness. It is rather a prolonged process with many different emotional and cognitive constituents, which is scaffolded socioculturally and involves navigating interpersonal connections with the dead. This chapter argues that attention to these aspects of grief’s nature allows us to discern several ways in which the experience of suicide loss is likely to diverge from other forms of grief. For those bereaved by suicide, the grief process will have distinctive constituent ingredients, which are disclosive of the particularities of one’s loss and often include high rates of guilt, shame, anger, and confusion. This type of bereavement is also associated with challenges for one’s continuing bonds with the dead and for one’s interpersonal relationships with the living. One’s relatedness to the dead may be complicated by challenges in reconciling the nature of the death with one’s memories, expectations, and feelings of interpersonal connection, while relationships with the living may be hampered by stigma and a lack of helpful narratives surrounding suicide, such that this form of grief may be ‘disenfranchised’. These features of suicide grief can go along with difficulties in making sense of the loss and in adapting to one’s new reality, making it harder to distinguish ‘normal’ experiences from those that may be deemed pathological.

Item Type:	Book Section
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > English, Communication and Philosophy
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General)
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	3 April 2025
Last Modified:	10 Apr 2025 09:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/177370

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item