Surviving the Suicide of Someone You Love- Timothy Mantooth

This short Ted Talk by Timothy Mantooth on ‘surviving the suicide of someone you love’ discusses the painfully unique issues and emotions that the family and friends left behind must confront. However, this is also an honest story of help and hope for those bereaved by suicide. 

Timothy describes the feelings of abandonment, betrayal, and anger, but also the overwhelming feelings of love that he was left with after he lost his father to suicide. He talks about how he realised that people find it so easy to discuss suicide prevention, but how they shy away from discussions of suicide bereavement. He also highlights this difficult transitional period of his life and how he struggled with the silence of others, although he recognised that it wasn’t that people didn’t want to say anything, it was that they didn’t know what to say or how to say it (this is why we developed our Conversation Guide!).

The biggest lesson Timothy learnt while navigating his grief was to focus on how his father lived his life, rather than how he died, and he now uses his learnings and experience to offer hope and healing to those surviving the suicide of someone they love.

You can watch the Ted Talk below.