Leaune, Edouard;
Hunt, Isabelle M;
Flynn, Sandra;
Pitman, Alexandra;
Mcdonnell, Sharon;
(2025)
Views of Suicide-Bereaved Adults Regarding the
Significance of the Deceased’s Death Date.
Journal of Loss and Trauma
10.1080/15325024.2025.2553227.
(In press).
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Abstract
Empirical research suggests that the date of death by suicide may have had particular significance to the deceased, for example their birthday or an anniversary. However, no research has explored the views of the social network of the deceased as to any perceived significance of the date of the suicide. We conducted a secondary analysis of qualitative data from a large online UK survey of suicide-bereaved adults conducted in 2017–2018, including a question on whether suicide deaths of those in the respondent’s social network were thought to be related to a significant date. We presented descriptive statistics for participants’ socio-demographic characteristics and conducted a descriptive thematic analysis of free-text responses capturing views about any perceived links between suicides in the respondent’s social network and any dates of significance, to establish a classification of types of significant dates relating to a close contact’s suicide. Of the 7,158 eligible survey respondents, 203 (2.8%) individuals endorsed that the suicide of a friend/relative had occurred on a date of significance. We classified such dates as: 1) birthdays (39.5%), 2) death anniversaries (30.2.%), 3) other significant dates (23.9%), 4) coinciding dates (3.9%), and 5) ambiguous date categories (2.4%). Participants often identified interpersonal issues between the deceased and others as a potential explanation for a specific date having significance. Despite the potential for recall bias in participants seeking meaning to a traumatic loss, our results identify the need for suicide risk assessments to consider specific significant dates as temporal risk factors for distress and suicide risk.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Views of Suicide-Bereaved Adults Regarding the Significance of the Deceased’s Death Date |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/15325024.2025.2553227 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/15325024.2025.2553227 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s), 2025. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | suicide, bereavement, grief, anniversary, qualitative |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Division of Psychiatry UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Division of Psychiatry > Epidemiology and Applied Clinical Research |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10213525 |
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