| The term "suicide survivor" denotes family members and close friends who are left to suffer in the wake of suicide. Current estimations count a staggering 4.47 million suicide survivors in this country, with 186,000 new survivors each year. Only recently has empirically based research been conducted on suicide bereavement, and many of the current studies have contradictory findings and are weakened by various methodological problems. While guilt is thought to be one of the most intense aspects of suicide bereavement, research has also yielded contradictory findings regarding the prevalence, nature, and impact of guilt for suicide survivors.; This study aims to identify how to better help suicide survivors through what can often be a difficult and painful mourning process by determining whether a positive relationship exists between complicated grief and unconscious, interpersonal guilt, as defined by Control Mastery Theory. Two hundred and fifty suicide survivors completed the following: (a) a brief demographic and informational questionnaire; (b) the Inventory of Complicated Grief (ICG-R); (c) the Interpersonal Guilt Questionnaire-67 (IGQ-67); and (d) the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale-Revised (CESD-R).; The results of the present study supported all hypotheses; overall interpersonal guilt contributed an additional 6% of the variance of participants' complicated grief scores, after the effects of depression were removed, R 2 = .34, F(2, 247) = 65.55, p < .0001. In addition, higher levels of complicated grief were noted for participants who were recruited from online resources specific to suicide survivors; those who had a lower level of education; those who had experienced a suicide relatively recently; those who were spouses and parents of individuals who committed suicide; those who had more frequent contact with the deceased before the suicide; and those who had greater perceived closeness to the deceased before the suicide. Further analyses of variables relating to attachment to the deceased revealed significant positive relationships between frequency of contact and separation guilt as well as perceived closeness and both survivor and omnipotent responsibility guilt. The implications of the results are discussed and suggestions for future research are made. |
