Views of Suicide-Bereaved Adults Regarding the Significance of the Deceased’s Death Date

Abstract

Empirical research suggests that the date of death by suicide may have had particular significance to the deceased, for example their birthday or an anniversary. However, no research has explored the views of the social network of the deceased as to any perceived significance of the date of the suicide. We conducted a secondary analysis of qualitative data from a large online UK survey of suicide-bereaved adults conducted in 2017–2018, including a question on whether suicide deaths of those in the respondent’s social network were thought to be related to a significant date. We presented descriptive statistics for participants’ socio-demographic characteristics and conducted a descriptive thematic analysis of free-text responses capturing views about any perceived links between suicides in the respondent’s social network and any dates of significance, to establish a classification of types of significant dates relating to a close contact’s suicide. Of the 7,158 eligible survey respondents, 203 (2.8%) individuals endorsed that the suicide of a friend/relative had occurred on a date of significance. We classified such dates as: 1) birthdays (39.5%), 2) death anniversaries (30.2.%), 3) other significant dates (23.9%), 4) coinciding dates (3.9%), and 5) ambiguous date categories (2.4%). Participants often identified interpersonal issues between the deceased and others as a potential explanation for a specific date having significance. Despite the potential for recall bias in participants seeking meaning to a traumatic loss, our results identify the need for suicide risk assessments to consider specific significant dates as temporal risk factors for distress and suicide risk.