Suicide and the Death of a Child: First Responder Perspectives
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Note: This post discusses suicide, including child suicide. If that’s a difficult subject for you, please use discretion before reading. If you need support, in the U.S. you can call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
You don’t talk about suicide.
Not at the dinner table. Not at church. Not even in briefing.
We hide it.
And it isn’t just about stigma.
It’s hundreds of years of misunderstanding, religious rules, cultural taboos, and the weight of silence passed down through generations. Suicide became something unspeakable, and so we learned not to say it out loud.
But first responders don’t get that option. You see it. Over and over again. And while any suicide is hard, when it’s a child, it stops everyone in their tracks. The innocence lost feels unthinkable. It’s the one kind of call that can crack even the most hardened or numb responder wide open.
The Hidden Nature of Suicide
Research in suicidology, beginning with Edwin Shneidman’s work, shows suicide is less about wanting to die and more about trying to end what he called “psychache”—unbearable psychological pain. Survivors of suicide attempts often say the same: they didn’t want death as much as they wanted the suffering to stop.
For kids and teenagers, that risk is even sharper. Their brains are still developing the ability to weigh long-term outcomes, which makes intense feelings seem permanent in the moment. Options feel closed, even when they’re not.
And the reality for kids today is different. They’re up against constant pressures; social media, high expectations, and fewer chances to work through hard feelings in healthy ways. As a culture, we often step in quickly to protect them from pain. The unintended result is that when strong emotions show up, many don’t have the practice to handle them. Without those coping skills in place, their reactions can swing to extremes.
This is also why suicide hides so well. It slips under the radar. The warning signs can be invisible. Some people mask it so completely that no one sees it until it’s too late.
This is where talk therapy can matter. Suicide is hidden in silence. Talking can bring it into the open, not to glamorize or to encourage, but to name what has been unspeakable. Once it’s spoken, it becomes something that can be worked with, shifted, maybe even survived.
At the same time, talking doesn’t always reach the place it needs to. Many kids today are already in therapy, and most parents are doing everything they can to support them. Yet the culture around mental health may not have fully caught up to what this generation is facing. Just as first responders don’t always respond to talk therapy after a difficult call, this generation lives under constant pressure and stimulation and may also need different ways of coping than what traditional models were built for.
That doesn’t make therapy wrong, but it does suggest we may need more than words. Approaches that work with the nervous system; like somatic practices, polyvagal-informed tools, or trauma therapies, might be better suited to reach the places talk alone can’t. Because much of suicide risk isn’t just in the mind. It’s in the body’s wiring, chemistry, and stress response, often long before anyone speaks a word.
On Scene: What First Responders Face
There’s a unique quiet at a suicide scene, especially when the victim is a child. Families searching your face for answers you can’t give. The air so heavy it feels like time has stopped.
But even in that silence, you’re still aware you have a job to do. You move into protocol, into the steps you’ve trained for, because someone has to.
What do you say?
Sometimes nothing. Sometimes the only thing you can offer is presence.
As responders, you carry it differently, too. Death from illness, accident, or violence follows a pattern you learn to live with. Suicide is different. It lingers. It raises questions that don’t always go away.
Beyond Rules and Taboos
Religion has shaped much of how society views suicide. For centuries it was called sin, selfishness, or weakness. That moral weight still hangs over families today. It silences them. It silences us.
But there are other ways of seeing. Some spiritual traditions suggest that every soul has its own path, and sometimes that path includes leaving earlier than we would ever want. This doesn’t take away the pain. But it offers another frame: that even in the most devastating loss, ripples of meaning can move through the lives of those who remain.
You don’t have to believe it. But sometimes, when nothing else makes sense, it helps.
Where We Go From Here
The truth is, suicide is not going away. More people than ever are asking themselves whether they can keep going in this world. Life feels heavy. The demands never stop. And some quietly decide they don’t want to do it anymore.
Telling them not to isn’t enough.
Silence isn’t enough either.
What changes things is letting the conversation surface, without shame. Letting people say, “I don’t want to be here,” and not recoiling from it.
Not every death will be prevented. But some can. And the only way forward is to keep speaking what was once unspeakable.
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The Stress Loop That’s Wrecking Your Sleep, Patience, and Back
Should Families See the Body After Traumatic Death? First Responder Perspectives.
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