When a person dies by suicide, those left behind are “catapulted on an emotional journey,” says Ronnie Walker, an advocate for survivors of suicide loss.
Walker — whose stepson, Chan, a promising Stanford student who struggled with bipolar disorder and died by suicide at 21 in 1995 — said that when it happens, often the first kind stranger a family member encounters is the person arranging the funeral.
“The grief is bigger than, say, the grief I felt when my mother passed [at 91],” said Walker, founder of Alliance of Hope for Suicide Loss Survivors, an online resource.