Group members share a singular pain
Support for people who have lost loved ones to suicide
A group that has been getting together in a booklined study in central Greenwich once a month since the start of the year is a group no one would want to join. But the service and support it provides to those who do may be invaluable.
Meeting in the office wing of the Second Congregational Church, the group lets people who have lost loved ones to suicide tell their stories, and to listen to others. Known as “Support Each Other,” the gathering is intended to help ameliorate the grief and suffering unique to loss from suicide.
Christophe Armero and his wife, Jennifer Baird, founded the local group to provide the same kind of support they received from a similar one in Westport. Armero’s son, and Baird’s stepson, Henry Armero, took his own life in 2012 at the age of 19, while he was a college student.
Armero said connecting with others who have gone through the same experiences can be very helpful.
“There’s no therapy being offered, there are no clinicians present. It’s just people sharing experiences,” he said.
Those shared experiences can be profoundly healing.
“Once you’re here in this group, months or years afterwards, the mere act of telling your story to people who have experienced the same thing, it’s a mysterious and wonderful thing, and it works,” Armero said. “It lays off some of the pain, and you also feel better because you understand other people have been through the same thing.”
More and more people are going through that process of grief. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month reported a steady rise in the U. S. suicide rate, up 25 percent since 1999. The CDC study found that suicide is now the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. Nearly 45,000 Americans killed themselves in 2016, twice the number who died by homicide. Middle- aged adults — ages 45 to 64 — had the largest rate increase, rising to 19.2 per 100,000 in 2016, from 13.2 per 100,000 in 1999.
The toll from suicide has also been given renewed public attention this year due to the high- profile deaths by suicide of the fashion designer Kate Spade and the chef and author Anthony Bourdain.
There are many enigmas around the act of suicide. Armero and his wife have done their best to explore the ways to cope with it, and they took a training seminar to become facilitators of the new support group. Through hard experience, they know about the grief that follows suicide only too well.
“You can feel guilty — was there a causality? Was there something I contributed? Should I have spotted it, could I have prevented it? There’s all kinds of emotions and guilt and recriminations you go through,” Armero said.
The facilitators also know that every person affected by suicide grieves differently. Some people are able to speak publicly about the loss in a matter of months. For others, it can take years before they can articulate their grief.
“Everyone grieves differently, and different things work for different people,” Armero said. “There’s different kinds of suicide loss. There’s a spectrum between those suicides which catch people completely by surprise and those who have been in therapy, rehab and had many different interventions.”
The support group has few ground rules. Participants are asked to refrain from commenting, or offering unsolicited advice, on the narratives of other group members. A strict code of confidentiality is also expected from members of the group. Armero said the primary goal is to talk, listen and empathize during 90- minute sessions — “listen and share your story.”
If there is time left over, the group might discuss a certain topic, such as how to handle anniversaries.
Armero, a business consultant who has a background in volunteer work, said it appeared to him a local group in Greenwich would fill a need. Besides the group in Westport, the nearest suicide- survivor group is in central Westchester County, N. Y. “We feel it’s a useful service, and if people want it, they’ll come,” Armero said.
The Support Each Other group meets the first Monday of every month at the Second Congregational Church in Greenwich, 139 East Putnam Avenue, at 7: 30 p. m. There is no affiliation with the church, other than the donated use of its office space. The meetings are non- religious. If Monday is a holiday, the group meet on the follow- ing Tuesday. Aug. 6 is the next planned meeting.
Participants are asked to send an email if they plan to attend, but it is not mandatory. Contact may be made at www. supporteachother. org.
A new support group in the region was welcomed by mental- health provider Sundar Ramaswami, a clinical psychologist, affiliated with the the Dubois Center in Stamford, who works with the Regional Mental Health Crisis Intervention Team that covers Greenwich and other local communities. He said suicide imposes a burden on family members like no other kind of loss.
“Suicide is such a traumatic experience, out of the realm of ordinary experience,” said Ramaswami. “Only families who have gone through this will be able to have an understanding, at an organic level, of what it’s like. No therapist can understand it. There’s the empathy factor, having walked in those shoes.”
There has been debate in the medical community behind what has been driving the higher numbers of suicide, Ramaswami said. Several factors may be involved, including a perception that there is greater uncertainty and unpredictability in contemporary life, the intensity of social media, higher rates of longterm unemployment and the spread of opioid- based drugs.
He said people who are experiencing suicidal impulses, or witnessing suicidal behavior in others, can get help.
The telephone number of the Southwest Connecticut Regional Mental Health Crisis Intervention Team is 1- 800- 586- 9903.