by Anne Basye
Sherry Bryant had already been a social worker for 10 years when her son, Todd, took his life in 1993. Her graduate and professional education had prepared her to face many human struggles, but not this one.
In a survivor’s group, she heard the word prevention for the first time. “All we knew how to do was react after a suicide happens,” she remembers. “Everybody assumed that you couldn’t prevent something like suicide and that we should not raise the subject with someone at risk because that might put ideas in their head.”
Avoiding the subject was not an option for Sherry. With other activists and U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher, she devoted the next 10 years to developing and nurturing a national strategy for suicide prevention.
State plans followed with tactics for educating people in schools, churches, workplaces. “We focused on how to educate everybody because it was clear that nobody, not even doctors, knew what to do,” she says.
Several years into their work, she and several fellow advocates made an important discovery. Sherry was a member of Our Savior’s Lutheran in Naperville, Illinois. Fellow activists Jerry and Elsie Weyrauch, whose daughter took her own life, belonged to the Lutheran Church of the Resurrection in Marietta, Georgia. Stephanie Weber, who started the first suicide crisis line in the Midwest, belonged to St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Aurora, Illinois, whose pastor Rev. Wayne Miller—now bishop of the ELCA Metropolitan Chicago Synod—had helped the group establish Suicide Prevention Services of America in Batavia, Illinois.
“We looked at each other and said, ‘Well, we’re all Lutheran. What are we doing in our church?’”
Raising the subject at church
Thus began the Lutheran Suicide Prevention Ministry (LSPM). Its goal is to give arms and legs to the ELCA’s Social Statement on Suicide Prevention, which calls on members, congregations and affiliated institutions to learn more about suicide and its prevention in their communities.
LSPM offers sermon starters, prayer resources, liturgies of remembrance and workshops for clergy and seminarians on how to help those at risk. It coaches pastors on preaching funeral sermons that affirm the sanctity of life without shaming the deceased and survivors. It raises awareness by helping congregations and colleges host panels of attempters and survivors.
Public information campaigns have helped tackle cancer, diabetes, AIDS and other health problems. Suicide is much harder to talk about, especially in church, where fear of stigma has caused families of suicides to cover up and clam up.
That’s unfortunate, Sherry says, because congregations “are set up to do exactly what we need to do for suicide prevention, which is listen, try to relate and stay in touch with each other.”
In the recent best-selling book and movie A Man called Ove, a despondent and isolated widower’s attempts at suicide keep getting interrupted by neighbors asking for his help. Each time he responds, he grows more involved with the world around him.
Calling people into relationship can extend lives. While Ove, like Sherry’s son, eventually does take his life, his friendships extend it by many years. “So often we focus on how we couldn’t help our loved one,” says Sherry. “I’ll never know how often just sitting with my son and listening to him complain about life really helped, or how his buddies and friends and sister helped him.”
More to do
Over a long life, each of us will hit a rough patch at some point. When isolation and hopelessness follow, the small connections are all the more important: a simple greeting, a check-in phone call, a knock at the door.
“The person who will save your life is not your doctor or therapist, but your neighbor, friend, spouse—someone you live with, someone who is part of your natural network and who you feel comfortable talking to,” says Sherry.
So how can a congregation equip itself to be there for people in crisis—for people contemplating suicide, and survivors (usually women) left behind to pick up the pieces after a loved one chooses death?
- Organize a memorial service, candlelight ceremony or walk to name and remember those who have died by suicide.
- Hold a training course in suicide and depression awareness.
- Strengthen existing “companionship ministries” like church greeters, potlucks, circles and socials.
- Light a candle near a window at8 p.m. on September 10 in support of World Suicide Prevention Day.
- Learn the QPR method: Question, Persuade and Refer.
- Post these important numbers in your church: National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: (800) 273-8255. For Veterans, press 1. For Spanish, call (888) 628-9454. Or text START to 741-741.
- Find links to these and other resources at lutheransuicideprevention.org
“We are trying to bring the issue of suicide out of the darkness and end silence and stigma around it,” says Sherry. “The only way to do this is bring it into the light.”
Anne Basye is a freelance writer living in the Pacific Northwest.
I welcome the articles bringing a dialogue surrounding suicide into light. In our small county of about 56,000 folks so far this year there have been 4 completed deaths by suicide. That number is compounded six or more times by the numbers left to suffer the loss. More concerning is the fact that there are on the average of 25-30 calls responded to by our sheriff and local police department by those who are “attempting/threatening suicide.Yes, we do need to bring about awareness, but more we need to provide a welcoming place where those 25-30 folks a month who attempt to die can come to talk out their feelings where someone will just listen and not judge — a place that may rekindle their desire to live up to their potential — a place for hope.
When I was 14 years old my father committed suicide. For years, it was a shameful secret I hid because, when I shared it with others, they simply didn’t know how to respond. We have norms in society in terms of how to respond when one dies of more “natural causes. We have no norms when speaking of suicide. Bringing this topic into the open frees those of us who are victims of this act and, I believe, is the only way to begin its prevention. Thank you!
Thanks for your work and witness, Sherry, Jerry and all. Our ELCA pastors serving as military, VA and federal prison chaplains are directly and personally involved in suicide prevention. We want to save lives. Chaplains are very willing to speak at seminaries, synods, conferences and congregations about suicide prevention. And remember the National Guard and Reserve chaplains in your local area who may help.
Thank You Sherry for sharing your story and being a tireless advocate for this important cause.
I’m blessed by the work you do for LSPM and I know others that are dealing with personal grief are blessed as well.
If one person talks about suicide, we are working at getting rid of the stigma of the disease.
Thanks again!
CDC statistics indicate over 400 ELCA members die by suicide annually. That means over 4,000 ELCA members are personally impacted by suicide annually – and a total of more than 60,000 ELCA members since 2000.
In Bishop Eaton’s new video on suicide prevention, she tells us “It is time to break the silence about suicide”.
This is easy to do by volunteering to help Lutheran Suicide Prevention Ministry (LSPM) lift awareness and make suicide prevention an ongoing part of the life of your congregation. How?
Go to the LSPM website, lutheransuicideprevention.org, and view the video “Suicide Prevention: How Faith Communities Can Make a Difference”.
Many no cost/low cost congregational activities are listed. If suicide has touched your life, here are things you can do to help prevent suicide. You will be part of the developing ELCA “suicide prevention army” that is “Declaring War on Suicide”. You will find taking action is “involvement therapy” that helps you heal while helping prevent suicide.
Just “Do It Now”.
Jerry, please share the link or exact source to back up your statement “CDC statistics indicate over 400 ELCA members die by suicide annually.” I am not familiar with the CDC providing such a breakdown in religious affiliation for the statistics, and before I reproduce this information, I would like to be able to properly cite it. Thank you.
Kate,
The website WISQARS by CDC provides stats on completed suicides. The American Association of Suicidology (AAS) web site provides much
More info on suicide statistics. In 2015 the national rate of suicide was over 13 people per 100,000 people. I used the number 12 to calculate that the ELCA with over 3.5 million members has, based on national averages, over 4,000 suicide deaths annually. For people impacted by suicide I used 10 per 100,000. AAS says 6 people intimately impacted. This is a highly subjective number, and 10’lends itself to easy computation. The truth probably is that these numbers underestimate the
Numbers of suicides because stigma causes some suicide deaths to be reported as death due to something else. Please call me at 404-877-2318 to discuss. Your interest is appreciated. Peace! Jerry
SHERRY BRYANT and Stephanie Webber have helped me survive the loss of my 14-year-old son, Drew. The knowledge of suicide prevention as well as helping survivors of suicide is evidenced in both of these women. They are to be commended! What a beautiful article!