In the spring of 2017, Nandini Murali, a South Indian journalist and author, returned from an out-of-town assignment to an eerily quiet home. Typically, her husband would greet her at the front door, but that morning he hadn't answered her phone calls. It was Nandini who discovered his body, and confronted an unfathomable reality. T.R. Murali, one of the most prominent urologists in India, and her beloved husband of 33 years, had ended his own life. "Space dissolved," writes Nandini, of that moment. "Time stood still. The axis of my life heaved, cracked and split." On the first anniversary of her husband's death, Nandini launched SPEAK (Suicide Prevention Postvention Education Awareness Knowledge). SPEAK seeks to cultivate awareness instead of stigma, and to break the taboos, shame, and secrecy around suicide through public campaigns and sensitization. Through SPEAK, Nandini has mobilized social support for prevention, intervention, and postvention efforts in India and beyond.In the course of these efforts, her searing personal grief has shape-shifted into deeply activated compassion and powerful clarity of purpose.

Death by suicide is a mysterious, puzzling and confusing experience for the bereaved, compounded by the accompanying trauma. The grief following such a death (as with death by homicide, accident, and death due to natural disasters) is traumatic because of the violence of the act and its suddenness.

Suicide is not an easy subject to talk about. It is commonly perceived as a private event motivated by dysfunctional individual behaviour and not a public health issue that impacts communities. Such negative stereotypes about suicide inform, influence and impact the trajectory of suicide grief, such that navigating grief becomes a lonely, isolating and frightening experience. Haunted by guilt, most survivors spend a disproportionate amount of time seeking to comprehend the motivations of the deceased.

The stigma acts as a mirror, and as a result, survivors internalise the shame and negative societal attitudes towards it. They fear that they, and the victim, will be judged negatively, and end up isolating and withdrawing themselves. Such a loss of social networks and breakdown of interpersonal relationships, both within the family and outside, delays or stunts the healing of the survivors, who remain unheard and unseen.

It would be helpful if relatives and friends were sensitised to this issue, with consideration and thought given to compassionate ways of responding and making themselves present and available. This is a complicated matter that takes considerable effort to navigate, but doing so would provide much needed support to the survivor.

Left Behind: Surviving Suicide Loss, is Nandini's fourth and latest book. In it, "She not only relates her own story of incalculable loss but also tells the stories of others like myself, who continue to wrestle with the unique grieving and mourning that follow the suicide of a loved one," writes Nandini's friend and fellow author Carla Fine, "All survivors of suicide loss will welcome Nandini’s practical and pioneering advice about how to develop resilience while never forgetting the person we have loved and lost.”

To read more of Nandini Murali's article, please click here.