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KMID : 0614420160440010076
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Mental Health & Social Work
2016 Volume.44 No. 1 p.76 ~ p.105
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Experiences of the Elderly Survivors After Spouses’ Suicide - Focusing on the Rural Areas
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Choi Myung-Min
Kim Ka-Duc
Kim Do-Yoon
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Abstract
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This study aimed to understand the bereaved families’ experiences of loss after the spouses’ suicides. Suicides of elderly in rural areas occupy a high rate of suicides in Korea. Conducting intensive interviews with 14 participants 7～20 months after spouses’ suicides, the contents were analyzed on the basis phenomenological method. In the results, the spouses of elderly suicides in rural areas went through not only the experience of loss caused by separation of death, but also by relatively more complex and painful social stigma associated with suicides. Because of their social standing in community and their concerns about their children, most of the survivors were pretending to cope with the situation ‘via a mask of wellness’, hesitant to seek external help. However, not every bereaved spouse of suicides had the same experience, and their lives were affected variously with conditional factors like support system and significance of suicides in respective lives. Classifying the spouses of elderly suicides into self-isolated type, naturally-isolated type, and daily-life adapting type, differentiated strategies are necessary to approach the survivors in accordance with the different experiences of loss.
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KEYWORD
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spouse’ suicide, survivors, elderly, experience of loss, rural area
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