Digital and Community Solutions After a Physician Suicide (part 3 of 3 with Janae Sharp)

In the final part of our discussion with Janae Sharp, Janae further discusses the loss of her husband and how best to support others through grief. She details some unique differences in responses by others when her husband died by suicide (eg, no GoFundMe pages, but requests for donations!) and emphasizes the importance of other survivors and their stories to her and her new community. She responds to the question of whether she is "sensationalizing" her husband’s death, but focuses on her ability to do good as a result. She is particularly interested in digital solutions and discusses a few that she has been working on here. Finally, she explains what she feels the role of psychiatry is in this important topic.
TRANSCRIPT
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David Carreon: You've been through such a difficult experience just in what happened, but what are things that people did or didn't do that were helpful after the suicide? How did people support you or fail to support you? And maybe more generally, how do people support or fail to support families who've had someone die by suicide?
Janae Sharp: Oh, that's a great question. It was hard because the first few days, people ask you what they can do. The first few days, you're really in the closet, not recovering at all. That was hard and it was hard for me to feel like my children were getting less. That was heart-breaking how some people supported it. People who had lost someone though, they were really good at following up and being thoughtful.
I had a friend who would send me articles about grief, and she did that for several years after John's death, just randomly saying, "Hey, I saw this and I was thinking of you." That's something I always tell people is important to schedule something further out, like six months from then and say ... Think of what you would do right after someone dies. Maybe you would go to their house and help them. Maybe you would make them a meal. Don't do it the day after, schedule it for a year later. Schedule it for the next birthday of that person, for any holiday is hard for people.
Purposefully do something instead of asking what you can do because we're socialized to not accept help and when you have grief, you don't always know what you want, it's too overwhelming. The people that were the most supportive were the people who had been through some kind of death and understood the cyclical nature, that some dies will be hard and some days are easier. That it's harder the second year when everyone has forgotten, and you're still taking your kids to a grave, or talking to your kids about their dad who's dead. So just keep that in mind.
I did have some friends who were really supportive and still understand that it's a permanent loss. It's not always permanently devastating. It's not always so immediate as right when they die, but they're still gone. So that's what I tell people.
Jessi Gold: Yeah. And then you mentioned that you were surprised afterwards, like some of the bad reactions, or some of the lack of things that you maybe thought would be around or given to you that weren't.
Janae Sharp: Oh yeah. Well, some of that is surprising because like with suicide prevention, some people they'll reach out to you. Some people asked us for money to donate to suicide prevention, and that was really overwhelming. If you look up things like GoFundMe, they raise less ... or like a memorial for kids ... they'll do it a lot of times if someone dies of cancer, but not necessarily with a suicide death.
That stuff was hard and then it's so strange talking about finances ever. When you're like, "Oh, wow. That's interesting that my kids didn't have a memorial fund." But then, you survived so what do you say? It's this horribly tacky topic where like, "Oh, that's weird." And then people are asking you for money for like awareness and ... Actually, Loss Survivors are the number one funder of suicide prevention initiatives. You're also a number one funder then for a topic that is really hitting you personally, and it kind of makes you ... it's kind of off-putting, but it's also ... now I like want to help those things. It's like the people who are hurting you in some ways, also some of those people were the most supportive. I don't know if that answers the question.
David Carreon: No, it does and I think that I've heard mental illness described as the no potluck disease. The no casserole disease.
Janae Sharp: We did not have funeral potatoes.
David Carreon: Yeah, it's like you get cancer and you get a casserole. You have a broken leg, you get a casserole. But you get mental illness and you get no casserole.
Janae Sharp: Yeah, you just can't post on Facebook, "Guys I just really could use a casserole today because of my depression. I am sad ...