Research project Losing someone close to suicide:
Suicide-bereaved people’s perspectives and evaluation of two psychoeducational support programs
Each year, approximately 1,500 people take their own lives in Sweden. Left behind are thousands of bereaved relatives who face a grief often described as particularly challenging and complex. Unlike other types of loss, suicide raises many questions—most notably, why it happened—and feelings of guilt are common. Grief can develop into serious psychosocial problems and, in the worst cases, lead to mental health issues and increased mortality. Despite this, professional support for the bereaved remains insufficient, and knowledge about which interventions are genuinely effective is limited.
Project description
This doctoral project is conducted in collaboration with the non-profit organization Spes (Suicide prevention and bereavement support) and aims to deepen the understanding of how people experience and cope with grief after losing a close one to suicide. The project combines qualitative research on participants’ experiences with an evaluation of psychoeducational support programs, with the goal of contributing to the development of evidence-based support for bereaved individuals.
The project has two main objectives:
1. To examine participants’ experiences of loss and grief:
The project seeks to gain deeper knowledge about grief processes, coping strategies, support needs, mental well-being, and access to social and professional support prior to participation in the programs. This is achieved through an analysis of participants’ accounts of life before the intervention, taking into account different bereaved perspectives and relationships.
2. To evaluate the psychoeducational content and impact of the programs:
The project investigates the extent to which participants find the support programs meaningful and whether participation influences their grief process, life situation, and mental health. The analysis is based on participants’ accounts of changes after completing the program. To further quantify program effects, self-report questionnaires are used to measure participants’ sense of coherence (SOC), mental well-being, functioning in the grief process, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress (PTS).
Through this combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, the project contributes to the national effort to develop an evidence-based framework for bereavement support following suicide. The aim is to prevent social problems, mental health issues, and increased mortality among bereaved individuals, and to facilitate access to support that promotes grief processing and enables a return to a meaningful life.
Project members
Project managers
Anneli Silvén Hagström
Senior lecturer, associate professor
Members
Nea Strandkulle
Doktorand
