This book is written by a survivor of suicide. Alison Wertheimer lost her own sister by suicide, but she has not made the mistake of assuming that this makes her an expert on the subject. Her expertise comes from very wide reading and from the systematic interviews she has carried out with fifty other people who have been bereaved by suicide.. She is to be congratulated on drawing all these strands together into a volume which will be of value to members of caring professions, counsellors, and friends of those bereaved by suicide, as well as the bereaved survivors themselves.' - Dr Colin Murray Parkes, author of Bereavement: Studies of Grief in Adult Life, Routledge 1986 Every year more than 8,000 people in Britain take their own lives. But what happens to their families and friends - the survivors of suicide? Because of the stigma attached to suicide, they have remained a largely hidden group, yet there are likely to be more than 80,000 new survivors annually, people whose lives have been profoundly affected by the suicide of someone close to them. A Special Scar is the first book by a British author to describe the experiences of survivors of suicide, including the parents, children, siblings and spouses of suicide victims. It reveals the particular problems which this group of bereaved people face: the stress of coping with the police, with post-mortems, inquests, and the resulting media publicity; the negative attitudes of friends and the community at large; the survivor's own feelings of shame and stigma; and the guilt and anger which many experience. A final chapter and resource section suggests how survivors can be helped and supported by those around them.