Silke Schurack

In the context of sudden death, such as suicide, aspects of our personal and society’s general understanding and attitude towards lives and deaths and the historical context of which they are created, are mirrored in the sense making of the (more often than not) utterly upsetting event. Potential agency to act upon whatever life throws at us, how things affect us, and how we respond to emotional stress – including help seeking behaviour and possible barriers encountered on the way to recovery, is bound to our habitus. That is, our “second nature”, a composition of our social, cultural, and political environment, as well as personal experiences. Moreover, the event can be turned into a new beginning, re-arranging life, adding new perspectives, and changing attitudes. Shifting from being acted upon into an actor, even feeling of being able to act upon the very event, or even the phenomenon as such, which appears larger after affecting us directly, gives back some sense of control, which is suggested to be essential to wellbeing and health, and recovery after loss. With a mixed approach of qualitative and quantitative data collection, this study maps out the experiences of those bereaved by suicide regarding available help in Iceland and matched with the aforementioned considerations.

The presented paper seeks to partly explore the complex history of LGBTQ history and its visibility in a particular museum in Iceland. A place to reflect on, connecting to history and contextualizing ones identity is important for wellbeing and ontological security, especially in periods of existential crisis. The museum can provide such access point. For cultural and social marginalized communities this can have a healing effect as well. Thus it is not only important to acknowledge the history of oppressed communities but mediating it in engaging mode, on well-founded ground and accurate manner, shared authority and in form of collaboration.

In most parts of In Western and Western influenced culture(s), the discourse on suicide - and suicide bereavement as subjoiners- is dominated by the field of health care, mental health care in particular. This fusion is simultaneously a
mechanism for identifying and ‘legitimizing’ the ‘problem’ of suicide as such with assumed solubility; resulting in corresponding suicide prevention policies. This is,
as I argue, part of Foucault´s notion of ‘biopolitics’, i.e. discipline of the body and population regulation; as well as an issue of power structures. 
        Suicide is associated with different forms of stigma and myths with partly devastating consequences for the bereaved. It has also been noticed that due to the effects of this mode of death and assumptions about it, suicidally bereaved may be at higher risk of difficult grief and even self-stigmatization. Suicide survivors, too, are subject to the mental health discourse of ‘authorities’, which is problematic insofar that not all suicides can be lumped together under the same gigantic hat of ‘mental illness’. A clear recognition of the diversity of underlying causes resulting in the suicide within the public discourse could be supportive in survivors’ perception of suicide bereavement as well as the mourning and recovery process.