The pain is still there, but Ilona Lüth and Patricia Gerstendörfer can laugh once again. Sitting together on two wooden chairs, they smile at each other. Their friendship is marked by a shared traumatic experience: Both lost loved ones to suicide.
“I asked Patricia all the questions I didn’t dare ask myself at the time,” says Ilona. “Do I need therapy now? Can I continue working? Can I manage without medication? Patricia encouraged me to do what felt right.”
When Ilona suddenly lost her husband to suicide six years ago, she was heading the customs department of a medium-sized company. Distracting herself with work helped her to bring a sense of normality back into her life, she recalls.
Ilona quickly realized that she wouldn’t be able to cope with her loss alone — so she sought help. A neighbor told her about a support group in Berlin. There, she met Patricia, who’s been the group’s volunteer leader for over 10 years.
“In the first year, I felt terrible,” she recalls. “There was just pain, and the horror. It took a long time before I was able to feel real grief.”
Helping yourself by helping others
It’s a Monday evening in September in an old building in Spandau, a historic district on the outskirts of Berlin. Group meetings for those affected by suicide are held here regularly on the ground floor.
The wooden table in the center of the room is laden with coffee, tea, chocolate and tissues. Brochures and flyers about assistance programs are available too. The board games on the bookshelf behind the circle of chairs are misleading, because tonight is not about fun and games, but about pain and coping.
Ilona is wearing a T-shirt bearing the words “Suicide Prevention Awareness.” Like Patricia, she’s also a volunteer in suicide prevention and grief counseling now. “Every suicide leaves six to 10 people behind — each with a life-changing experience. That’s a lot of people who need help,” says Ilona.
Ilona (left) and Patricia work voluntarily in suicide preventionImage: Djamilia Prange de Oliveira/DW
This commitment not only helps other people, but also Patricia and Ilona themselves, for it gives them a sense of purpose. Without that feeling, Patricia might not be here today herself.
When her husband took his own life in 2007, Patricia considered following suit. At the time, she was working in a facility for people living with mental illness and knew the medicine cabinet there well.
“I took what I needed, so that I’d be prepared,” she admits. “Because I knew that if this phase didn’t end, I wouldn’t be able to survive it. I wasn’t myself anymore.”
When people around her told her that time heals all wounds, it made her angry. “Nothing will heal anymore. It won’t get better,” she would say. She felt that way for almost a year, until her best friend decided to move into the house next door.
This decision may have saved her life, she says. “At the time, I couldn’t be alone in the empty apartment. And by always being around, he kept me alive,” she recalls.
‘What if I had taken an earlier train?’
After her husband’s suicide, Patricia had felt guilty. She asked herself if she could have saved him if she had only taken an earlier train home.
“I thought I’d failed to keep him alive — but he deliberately chose a time when I was 600 km away,” she says. “It took me a long time to get some distance from the feelings of guilt.”
In the support group, she found purpose. After several years as a participant, Patricia took over as leader. Since then, she’s made it her mission to support others in similar situations.
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10 people showed up to the group meeting on this Monday evening, many of them still young. One participant is mourning her sister who was in the midst of sitting for her high school exams.
Another is mourning her grandmother, who had lost the will to live. Patricia listens to them. She has no magic formula for their pain, she says, but talking about it helps.
Male suicide epidemic
Many of those who die by suicide are male, as in the cases of Patricia’s and Ilona’s husbands. This is no coincidence: globally, around three quarters of all suicides are committed by men, as several studies have confirmed. “The older men get, the greater the suicide risk,” explains Ute Lewitzka, professor of suicide studies and prevention at Goethe University Frankfurt. It may also be relevant that men are less likely to seek help when they have suicidal thoughts, she says.
People from marginalized groups, like those who have had traumatic life experiences, who are affected by displacement and migration, are living with physical or mental illnesses, and members of the LGBTQ community are also at higher risk, according to Lewitzka.
The fact that worldwide suicide rates have been in decline for some time now — except in the US, where the availability of firearms plays a central role — is also due to improved support services, says Lewitzka.
Ute Lewitzka is a professor for suicide research and prevention at the Goethe University in FrankfurtImage: Maria Schlotte
According to the World Health Organization, the global suicide rate fell by almost 30% between 1990 and 2021. Since 2021, however, numbers have been on the rise again in some countries. Germany saw an almost 10% increase from 2021 to 2022, according to data from the Federal Statistical Office.
The reason for this has not yet been scientifically established, but in addition to the increase in offers for assisted suicide, Lewitzka also points to the impact of crises and war.
More positive examples needed
Suicide is not a contemporary phenomenon. In 1774, German writer Goethe described the inner emotional world of his unhappily enamored protagonist in “The Sorrows of Young Werther” that ended with the character’s suicide. The romanticized account triggered a wave of imitations that researchers have since coined the “Werther effect.”
However, Lewitzka explains that the flip side, namely that media portrayals can also have positive effects, has not yet been sufficiently researched. “The problem is how we talk about suicide. Stories of people who have experienced suicidal crises but have overcome them, and what helped them, are actually protective. That’s the so-called ‘Papageno effect’.”
In Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” the bird catcher Papageno contemplates taking his own life because he cannot find a partner. Just as he is about to do so, three boys appear and encourage him not to go ahead with it. And Papageno chooses to live.
This article was originally written in German.
If you are suffering from serious emotional strain or suicidal thoughts, do not hesitate to seek professional help. You can find information on where to find such help, no matter where you live in the world, at this website: https://www.befrienders.org/
