In This Issue:

- Risk Factors and Warning Signs

- How to Help

- Protective Measures

- Helping Survivors

- When someone we know dies by their own hand, waves of emotion attack the survivors. We are bewildered, guilt-stricken, even angry, all on top of the usual grieving that comes after any death. Suicide violates the instinct of self-preservation, and so for the survivors is such an alien act that we cannot readily process it.

I recently joined the ranks of people shocked by suicide when a friend took his life. Although my friend was struggling with his career, he seemed to me, and to many other friends (I later learned), perfectly OK. Now, I turn over and over in my mind my last conversation with my friend a few days before he killed himself, and I wonder what I might have done differently to help him climb out of a deep pit that I didn't know he had fallen into.

I've learned that this "what if" script is common among those who have lost loved ones by suicide.

This month's newsletter examines why people die by suicide, offers measures to protect against it, and help for survivors.