“the suicide isn’t an “event” but part of a whole pattern”

Survivor reflection

If we understand that some of our existing practices and processes are colluding with perpetrators and enhancing risk, we can then begin to think about how we want to change this so that we can enhance dignity and support recovery, safety, and justice.

Below, we have co-designed dignity-enhancing principles with survivors to be used as core tenets to any response to perpetrator suicide.

1. Support trajectories of healing **

2. Understand the death as part of coercive control, not as an isolated event

3. Name and validate women’s experiences

4. Centre women’s and children’s stories and voices

5. Recognise that women’s safety concerns are real

6. Support women to navigate death-related systems

7. Provide family-centred support for mothers and children

8. Recognise embodied impact

9. Support and acknowledge complex emotional responses

10. Work towards institutional accountability

11. Recognise the role of gender and power

12. Anticipate and acknowledge shame

Go back:

What remains: a guidebook for organisations on supporting women with experience of perpetrator suicide

Go forward:

7. Reflections for managers, practitioners, researchers, and commissioners