Can professionals and nonprofessionals work together following a suicide?

Suicide is the taking of one's own life by one's own hand. It is often sudden and creates many emotional reactions for the survivors left behind. Survivor responses can be impacted by a range of circumstances, from how the person died to the reactions of people to the survivor. This contribution examines the uniqueness of survivor grief and how best to help survivors. It is suggested that their grief may be too quickly viewed as pathological, resulting in the premature medicalization of basically normal reactions. It is time for professionals and nonprofessionals to recognize boundaries and work toward mutual goals of health for those persons left behind after a suicide.