Where can I find research, textbooks, et cetera, discussing how suicide bereavement depends on the type of relationship a person had to the deceased? I think grieving and better surviving a loss to suicide has different features depending on whether the deceased was a peer, a parent (for a dependent minor child survivor), or a child (for a parent survivor). For example, minor children of a suicide parent may have arrested development issues because the years that are somewhat lost are critical development years, they may develop life long insecurity by losing somebody they depend so significantly upon, and they lack much of the maturity that helps a person survive loss well. I’m in this category. But it’s obvious that nobody asks the little kid to arrange the funeral, or to clean up the main bedroom after a suicide by gunshot, or to manage the estate and the lawyers and courts and police. It’s also obvious that parents typically feel more protective of children than anybody else. All these dynamics must be important, I think.
I’m part of a suicide bereavement peer group and would like to bring better information into our program. We do have chance access to some local professionals (psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers) but generally they’re going to have their broad educations and experiences. What I’d like to find is the work of people who have researched this topic specifically.
I have found some books specifically about one or another of these relationship categories, and I guess that is helpful, but I’d like to find the framing overall for the significance of the relationships. Also, the books I’m finding target the reader as the patient, whereas I’d like to find more about content development guidance for groups with multiple relationship types in their membership.
Any good sources or search strategies the Dopers can suggest?