Grieving the death of a child: Clinicians should ensure that lethal drugs are handed back

doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7544.794-a

BMJ 2006;332:794 (1 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7544.794-a

Letter

Grieving the death of a child

Clinicians should ensure that lethal drugs are handed back

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Davies's case reports of completed suicide in recentlybereaved parents are a timely reminder of one of the few areasin suicide prevention (access to lethality) where clinicianscan intervene to save lives.¹

Within the anger of acute grief—case 1 describes "holdingon" to the decreased person beyond the usual grief experience¹—thechild's drugs can acquire a symbolic value. The same appliesto bereaved spouses who may also come to see their late partner'stablets as hope that betrayed them. Gunnell and Lewis providea useful conceptual framework in which to consider a person'srisk of suicide²: a combination of predisposing plus facilitatingfactors minus protective factors such as social role, parenthood,help seeking behaviours during crisis, and religious belief.In the context of the sudden loss of many protective factors,where most people's coping skills would be overwhelmed by theloss of a child, clinicians . . . [Full text of this article]