Sibling Suicide Survivors: The "Forgotten Mourners"
“So how many brothers and sisters do you have?”
I used to dread that question. I still do, if I’m honest, but it’s a quick dull thud of emotion compared to the raging, blood-draining torrent it used to evoke in me.
The answer is always the same: one sister. But whispering in the background are the ghosts of the other two answers that come to mind (and the reasons why I can't give them).
“One sister, one brother.” Nope, can’t go there—not technically true, even though that's how I feel. Besides, what do I say when the inevitable next questions come: How old are they? What do they do?"
“One sister—and I used to have a brother, but he died when I was 21.” Sure, if I want to make that person really uncomfortable I can go there. I might even get to watch them visibly squirm if they ask how he died.
As even this small exchange shows, it’s a lonely experience being a sibling bereaved by suicide.
In the aftermath of my brother’s death, I waded through screeds of information on suicide, compulsively searching for I-don’t-quite-know-what. Answers? Confirmation? Connection? Where were the siblings? Where were the others like me?
When I began to research sibling suicide myself, many years later, I realised just how little has been written about us. Just ten academic studies have ever been dedicated exclusively to the experience of sibling suicide (and one is my own).
Here’s what has been found so far about the experience of living through a sibling’s suicide:
1. It’s confusing, painful and hard—with more challenges than ‘normal’ bereavement.
Sibling suicide survivors have been found to experience a range of distressing and challenging phenomena. This may include:
A marked sense of guilt and responsibility around the death.
Intense anger, stemming from a deep sense of rejection and abandonment.
Feelings of shame and worthlessness
Overwhelming anxiety and fear.
It’s also common for survivors to feel relief, if the death marks the end of a long period of worry and uncertainty. This tends to fuel further guilt, creating an ongoing cycle of emotional disturbance.
As can be expected given this litany of psychological challenges, sibling suicide survivors are at particular risk of developing complicated grief reactions, depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms. They’re also at an increased risk of taking their own lives.
2. Siblings suffer intensely—and they also tend to suffer invisibly.
In a family bereaved by suicide, each person becomes too preoccupied with their own pain to offer meaningful support to the others. Under these circumstances the surviving siblings “often find themselves not only neglected, but expected to put their needs aside in order to spare their parents further distress” (Rakic, 1992, p. 2).
Many grieving siblings try to appear "emotionally together" or even cheerful around their parents, despite their own intense pain. They usually experience a desperate desire to make their parents happy again, and the message to "be strong for your Mum and Dad" tends to be given by others implicitly, explicitly, and often. The siblings’ demeanour is then perceived as evidence that the surviving children have not been badly affected by the loss, making them even less likely to receive care and validation.
In addition, the presence of anger towards the dead sibling—let alone its expression—is usually viewed as highly inappropriate and unacceptable, even in families that can speak relatively freely about emotions.
3. There’s usually no space to talk within the family—and nowhere to talk outside of it either.
The sense of isolation siblings experience is exacerbated to varying degrees by the social stigma around suicide, which makes discussing the death with people outside the family very challenging. It’s still common for people who end their lives to be disparaged as "selfish" and "cowardly." Research has also shown that suicidally bereaved families receive less community support compared to families that lose a member to "natural" causes, and may be avoided and/or blamed for the death.
Many siblings described being extremely hurt by the actions of those they hoped would support them following the suicide. Some friends abandoned them altogether, while others silenced them with platitudes, told them they "shouldn’t feel like that," or acted as though the death had never happened. Some siblings spoke of friendships ending due to impatience that the siblings "still weren’t over it," while others said they deliberately withdrew from their friends. After what they had been through, they found themselves experiencing their peers as immature, unempathic and/or focused on trivial concerns.
Even when friends are available and supportive, siblings may feel pressure to swallow their hurt to avoid awkwardness. They may also stigmatise themselves negatively due to guilt, and self-isolate out of shame.
4. The loss can cast a very long shadow, affecting the siblings’ sense of security in the future, in relationships, and in life itself.
A sibling’s suicide can severely damage any sense of trust in the stability of meaningful relationships. If your brother or sister—one of your absolute constants in life—can leave like this, anything feels possible and very little feels secure. Research shows that:
Numerous siblings became preoccupied with the fear of losing other loved ones to death or being abandoned by them.
Many worried that the tragedy of the suicide would be repeated in their own future families. Two academics noted a deep sense of ‘maternal inadequacy’ amongst some of the female siblings, who avoided having the children they longed for out of fear and conflicted feelings related to the loss.
Some older siblings felt they had relived the loss in their romantic relationships—entering unsatisfying or painful pairings which ultimately resulted in their being abandoned or let down again.
5. Many siblings eventually create meaningful, purposeful lives out of this emotional nightmare—with a greater sense of perspective and empathy.
During research interviews, many sibling suicide survivors spoke of experiencing a profound shift in perspective over time. Many became involved in suicide prevention activities and some chose to become counsellors or therapists, dedicating their lives to helping others survive their emotional struggles. They spoke of valuing the increased compassion and empathy their life experiences had given them, even though they had suffered profoundly.
This has been my own experience, though nobody could have told me at the time without getting their head bitten off. It makes writing about sibling suicide bereavement a tough ask, knowing that while you are in the experience—angry, guilty, isolated, broken-hearted or just broken depending on the day—it’s so hard to take in even the tiniest sliver of hope that things could ever be better.
But in time, they will. Take it from someone who never, ever believed it when it was said to me.