Obituary candor about mental illness and addiction
It was not very long ago that it was unheard of for family members to include causes of death by suicide or drug overdose in obituaries. That trend is changing, and more families are finding it healing to honestly acknowledge the pain that mental health issues can cause while also celebrating all of the wonderful things about their loved one who has passed.
Feelings of shame and embarrassment are often the reason families don’t include the cause of death, but those feelings are not helpful emotions when it comes to navigating grief, according to Nancy Pace, LCSW, with Cape Cod Human Services.
“Whenever you talk about grief therapy, the number one thing is that in order to process it you have to acknowledge the whole picture,” she said. “This stigma of mental health and addiction make processing grief difficult and people can get stuck.”
It is very understandable how this can happen. When a loved one has mental health or addiction issues it can cause emotions like anger, guilt and shame. Sometimes people who suffer from addiction do things like steal from family members, which can add anger and resentment to the emotional turmoil.
“It’s really important to be able to acknowledge these things in order to process grief,” Pace said. “If we don’t do that, and we kind of glaze over things, it makes processing grief very difficult.”
Loved ones often blame themselves for not being a good enough parent, sibling or spouse but that is a very unhelpful line of thinking because there are so many factors that go into these issues. It’s just not accurate for a loved one to blame themselves and it prevents them from moving on, she explained. It’s never just one person or one thing that causes these problems.
Becoming More Common
Even though Pace supports those who choose to be honest in obituaries, she emphasized that it may not be the right choice for everyone.
“It’s important that people respect each other’s boundaries,” she said. “It’s so different for everyone and there are so many stages of grief that, for one person, talking about it can be very therapeutic and for another person it could be harrowing.”
Part of the reason Pace thinks people are being more open and honest about these difficult topics is because unfortunately they have become more common. Most people now know someone who has been affected by addiction, depression and suicide. The numbers tell the story.
“Between 2000 and 2021, there has been a 36 percent increase in suicide and a 781 percent increase in preventable drug overdoses,” Pace said.
News stories about high-profile celebrities who die from addiction or suicide, like Matthew Perry, Prince, Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, also help reduce the stigma because they offer people a chance to talk about the issues.
Whether or not a family decides to be public about their loved one’s addiction or mental illness, it is important for them to find ways to deal with it privately, Pace said. A therapist can help those who are grieving process their emotions. As long as the emotions are processed in a healthy way, it doesn’t really matter if it is done publicly.
“You can’t really get help unless you acknowledge what’s going on, but there are so many reasons why that’s difficult and painful,” she said. “It’s a habit for many people to avoid pain because they think that they can’t handle it. Therapy is a helpful way of slowly integrating acknowledgement of pain and learning you can tolerate it so that you can really look at something in the eye and do something about it, instead of just avoiding it.”
