Advice on suicide.

[tripperfunster]

No, not on how to do it.

A friend of mine is dealing with the suicide of one of his employees. This person had worked for him for many years, manning the phones and doing much of the paperwork and stuff.

This year my friend decided to take on that job himself, thinking he could save the company some money.

And yeah, that employee, who was not hired back this year killed himself. He had always been a bit of a loner, and my friend knew that ending the job would be hard on him, but he obviously never expected this person to commit suicide. He had actually talked to him about possibly working part time, but too little, too late, I suppose.

And now, understandibly, my friend is just gutted with guilt over this.

I spoke with him about how I understand his guilt, and of course ANYONE would feel guilty in this circumstance, but that he needed to realize that the only person responsible for this suicide was the person who did it. Anyone who knows/loves/is related to/married to/works with someone who dies this way questions themselves. What could they have done differently? What if they hadn't said A or B? etc.

It's a natural response, but in the end, they cannot be responsible for someone else's life.

I'm not sure if this helped or not, and uh ... being a DUDE, it's really hard to say what's going on with him emotionally.
he DID ask me what he should tell people who ask about what happened, and I told him that all he needs to say is that X took his own life.

Any advice from people with more experience? Obviously, it's a horrible thing, no matter how you slice it, but is there any way to ease the guilt that my friend is feeling?

Thanks in advance.

Comments

[forest-rose.livejournal.com]

Gaah, stupid LJ ate my long comment! I talked to my fiancé about this - he's a psychiatrist, so has experience of this horrible sort of situation - and he said it's important to remember that people make their own choices, and we can't ultimately change what they decide to do. There are (almost) always lots and lots of factors leading to a suicide, not just the one thing that an individual person feels guilty about. A good analogy is a game of Jenga - each individual block you pull out is like a factor that leads to a suicide, and the one that you pull out last isn't any more significant in itself than all the others.

Feel free to email me and A if you (or your friend) want to talk more about this. I worked on a suicide crisis line for 2 years, and now see lots of suicide survivors in A&E, so we both have some insight into this. xx

[tripperfunster.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much!

Everyone has pretty much given me the same advice that I'd given him, so ... that's good? I was kind of hoping for some miracle thing, but of course, that just doesn't exist.

I do like the jenga analogy, because it really does seem like my friend pulled out that last block.

Thank you for the offer. I highly doubt he'd talk to someone he didn't know. I think he talks to me partly because we've known each other for a long time, but also that I call him out on his bullshit quite a bit, and he respects that. ;)