The Long Sleep: A Practical Guide to Supporting Young People With Suicidal Thoughts
Kate Hill
Worldwide, suicide is one of the leading causes of death among young people, and numbers continue to increase. Many more young people have experienced suicidal thoughts, or have self-harmed or attempted suicide. What makes someone particularly vulnerable? Why do proportionally more young men than women resort to suicide? What can be done to support people and prevent young deaths? ‘The Long Sleep’ explores the origins, symptoms and meanings of young peoples’ suicidal crises and argues the need for sensitive responses and improved understanding if current rates are to be curbed. Combining moving accounts from relatives and young attempters with the evidence of extensive research into the subject, Kate Hill offers important and timely insights into an area fraught with fear and denial.
Reasons to Stay Alive
Matt Haig
Aged 24, Matt Haig’s world caved in. He could see no way to go on living. This is the true story of how he came through crisis, triumphed over an illness that almost destroyed him and learned to live again. A moving, funny and joyous exploration of how to live better, love better and feel more alive, this is more than a memoir: it is a book about making the most of your time on Earth.
How Not to Kill Yourself: Portrait of a Suicidal Mind
Clancy W. Martin
The last time Clancy Martin tried to kill himself was in his basement with a dog leash. He didn’t write a note. How Not to Kill Yourself is an affirmation of life by someone who has tried to end it multiple times. It’s about standing in your bathroom every morning, gearing yourself up to die. It’s about choosing to go on living anyway. In an unflinching account of his darkest moments, Clancy Martin makes the case against suicide, drawing on the work of philosophers from Seneca to Jean Améry. Through critical inquiry and practical steps, we might yet answer our existential despair more freely – and with a little more creativity.
Are You Really Ok?
Roman Kemp
During the pandemic, Roman’s life changed when his best friend – the producer who’d nurtured his career every step of the way – tragically took his own life. Amidst the shock, loss and confusion, Roman bravely made a moving BBC3 documentary about the alarming rates of suicide amongst young males. He’s well aware he too, could have been a statistic. In this page-turning book – peppered with hilarious and surprising anecdotes from his youth – Roman also unflinchingly tackles the taboo of suicide, in the hope that by talking about his own struggles and sharing advice, he can help others. Roman shares all the experiences that have shaped him, and why love, marriage and having his own family one day are so important to his future dreams.
When It is Darkest: Why People Die by Suicide and What We Can Do to Prevent It
Rory C. O’Connor
When you are faced with the unthinkable, this is the book you can turn to. Suicide is baffling and devastating in equal measures, and it can affect any one of us: one person dies by suicide every 40 seconds. Yet despite the scale of the devastation, for family members and friends, suicide is still poorly understood. Drawing on decades of work in the field of suicide prevention and research, and having been bereaved by suicide twice, Professor O’Connor is here to help. This book will untangle the complex reasons behind suicide and dispel any unhelpful myths. For those trying to help someone vulnerable, it will provide indispensable advice on communication, stressing the importance of listening to fears and anxieties without judgment.
One Wild Song: a Voyage in a Lost Son’s Wake
Paul Heiney
Poignant, moving, funny, thought provoking and beautifully written, Paul Heiney’s account of setting his own course through seemingly insurmountable grief makes for a powerful story. Injected with humour, perceptiveness and philosophy, recounting his highs, lows, frustrations and triumphs, the honesty and openness of Paul’s story makes this very personal account a universal tale.
The Scent of Dried Roses
Tim Lott
Tim Lott’s parents, Jack and Jean, met at the Empire Snooker Hall, Ealing, in 1951, in a world that to him now seems ‘as strange as China’. In this extraordinarily moving exploration of his parents’ lives, his mother’s inexplicable suicide in her late fifties and his own bouts of depression, Tim Lott conjures up the pebble-dashed home of his childhood and the rapidly changing landscape of postwar suburban England. It is a story of grief, loss and dislocation, yet also of the power of memory and the bonds of family love.
A Special Scar: the Experiences of People Bereaved by Suicide
Alison Wertheimer
Every 85 minutes someone in the UK takes their own life and the suicide rate is currently the highest since 2004. Society often reacts with unease, fear and even disapproval but what happens to those bereaved by a self-inflicted death?
A Special Scar looks in detail at the impact of suicide and offers practical help for survivors, relatives and friends of people who have taken their own life. Fifty bereaved people tell their stories, showing us that, by not hiding the truth from themselves and others they have been able to learn to live with the suicide, offering hope to others facing this traumatic loss.
Before the Light Fades: A Memoir of Grief and Resistance
Natasha Walter
After the sudden death of her mother at age 75, Natasha Walter was thrown into a time of bewilderment and sadness. It was only when she began to search back through Ruth’s history, that she began to understand how her life led to death by her own hand.
Honest about loss, this memoir also searches for what is valuable in the legacy of a family who lived through some of the great crises of the twentieth century. Without false hope, and with honest passion, Natasha Walter shows us why, even when success is far from assured, it is always important to stand up for what you believe.
Cry of Pain: Understanding Suicide and the Suicidal Mind
Mark Williams
‘Cry of Pain’ examines the evidence from a social, psychological and biological perspective to see if there are common features that might shed light on suicide. Informative and sympathetically written, it is essential reading for therapists and mental health professionals as well as those struggling with suicidal feelings, their families and friends.
Dying to Be Free: a Healing Guide for Families After a Suicide
Beverley Cobain and Jean Larch
A healing guide for family members who have lost a loved one to suicide, this book contains recollections from suicide survivors to provide an insight into the confusion, fear, and guilt family members experience.
Honest, gentle advice for those who have survived an unspeakable loss—the suicide of a loved one. Transforming suffering into strength, misconceptions into understanding, and shame into dignity, Beverly Cobain and Jean Larch break through the dangerous silence and stigma surrounding suicide to bring readers this much-needed book.
My Son… My Son…: a Guide to Healing After a Suicide in the Family
Clare MacKintosh
Iris Bolton’s classic work about healing from loss still holds as powerful a message as when it was first published in 1983. At bottom, life and death are our greatest teachers — if we shall but listen. Iris Bolton’s personal story of her son Mitch’s suicide is a deeply moving, poignant one. It is a story of both a devastating tragedy and an exquisite triumph — and the agonizing, relentless, conflicted process connecting these two oppositional pulls. This book is part memoir of their experience and part handbook for dealing with the grief. Her co-author was her father, Curtis Mitchell.
The Forgotten Mourners: Sibling Survivors of Suicide
Magdaline Halous DeSousa
This book is meant for anyone who has lost a brother or sister to suicide – and those who want to support them. Any loss is difficult, but a loss to suicide is heightened because of the helplessness and confusion surrounding it. A sibling loss to suicide is even more unique because the sibling(s) left behind are often forgotten – mourning the loss of their brother or sister alone in the shadows of their parents’ grief.
Magdaline answers questions directly from her experience following the loss of her 18 year-old brother, John, to suicide in November 2001. Hopefully, her story will give readers a small piece of strength, faith, and peace in navigating the long road to healing ahead.
Silent Grief: Living in the Wake of Suicide
Christopher Lukas and Henry M. Seiden
Silent Grief is a book for and about “suicide survivors” – those who have been left behind by the suicide of a friend or loved one. Author Christopher Lukas is a suicide survivor himself – several members of his family have taken their own lives – and the book draws on his own experiences, as well as those of numerous other suicide survivors. These personal testimonies are combined with the professional expertise of Henry M. Seiden, a psychologist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist. The authors present information on common experiences of bereavement, grief reactions and various ways of coping. Their message is that it is important to share one’s experience of “survival” with others and they encourage survivors to overcome the perceived stigma or shame associated with suicide and to seek support from self-help groups, psychotherapy, family therapy, Internet support forums or simply a friend or family member who will listen.
The Suicidal Mind
Edwin S. Schneidman
Why do people take their own lives? Is there anything others can do to stop them? How can we tell when a person is suicidal? In this book, Edwin Schneidman looks carefully at the psychological processes that lead to suicide and discusses suicide as a product of psychological pain and thwarted psychological needs. With suicide (and especially youth suicide) seemingly increasing throughout the Western world today, this book represents a forthright attempt to revitalize the topic anddemonstrate that everyone can detect and stop potential suicides from occuring.
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