ten about the child.
Another characteristic shared by surviving parents is the contemplation of their own deaths as a means of being reunited with their dead child. The acute phase of this type of suicidal
ideation lasts between two weeks and three months. The chronic
phase, in which a parent no longer contemplates actual suicide but would not act to prevent his own death, lasts over a year. It seems that few parents ever fear death the same way as they did before the tragedy. Fortunately, most parental suicides are pre-vented by the realization that such am act would only add to the pain of other family members (Knapp, p. 63).
Mothers especially tend to feel that their own survival is meaningless after the death of their child; over one-half of the mothers who experience a death wish end up without the motivation to actively seek out happiness anymore, and just withdraw from participation in life. This withdrawal is known as "shadow grief." T
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