New program looks to help local survivors of suicide loss

SHARON, Mass. — Local police departments in more than half a dozen communities are collaborating on a new initiative that supports survivors of suicide loss.

It’s a program that’s been years in the making and cuts down on the years someone would often wait to reach out for help after suffering an unimaginable loss.

When police respond to a call, they have to be prepared for anything.

“There’s a wide variety of stuff for police officers,” said Sharon Police Chief Stephen Coffey. “It seems like more and more in every year, there’s more thrown on us to provide for every different situation.”

Sharon Police Chief Stephen Coffey says his department is seeing more mental health-related calls ---some include suicides.

“Sometimes you get to a scene where it’s very emotional and there’s a lot of, you know, a lot information you need to sort through first, settling down, slowing down the situation, figuring out we might have to hold the scene for a period of time until we can determine what has happened,” said Coffey.

While his officers secure the scene—they now have a new tool to handle the emotional aspect—thanks to a partnership with Samaritans.

“We have made it very simple for them,” said Sissi O’Shaughnessy, Samaritans Senior Director of Suicide Grief Support Services. “They have a phone number that they can call when there has been a suicide loss and then a series of questions that they need to ask the family members. They relay that information to our on-call supervisor, and then our on-call supervisor dispatches our team members to the scene.”

Samaritans launched its local outreach to suicide survivors, known as LOSS teams, in seven communities outside of boston. the team members offer compassion and support to families at their most vulnerable moments after suicide. It took years to train the members because many of them experienced suicide loss themselves—including the program’s director Sissi O’Shaughnessy.

“If I would have had a loss team come to the house and talk to me and talk to my girls during that time, I think my grief journey would have looked a lot different,” said O’Shaughnessy.

O’Shaughnessy says the LOSS model slashes the wait for surivors to seek help from four and half years down to just six weeks often because of the stigma that surrounds suicide.

“Just having the hope of seeing somebody walk into the house and saying you went through this too and you survived,” said O’Shaugnessy. “That’s an instant connection that you can make with another loss survivor. So my hope is that that piece that I didn’t have, you know, in that moment that we can offer our community now.”

The LOSS team is trained to walk into grief and trauma situations—and can respond to a scene within 48 hours.

“This gives us our officers a great chance to provide the resources and the information to the families where officers may not necessarily be trained in how to deal and counsel families or a neighborhood who’s dealing with the grief of suicide,” said Coffey.

And the quicker the help—O’Shaughnessy believes it could prevent any future tragedies.

“We know that suicide loss survivors are at a three times higher rate for suicide ideation themselves and so working through their grief with the resources that we can offer lessens and lowers the risk of their own suicide ideations,” said O’Shaughnessy.

Samaritans rolled out this new collaboration with communities that don’t have as many suicide losses to make sure the right protocols are in place. The hope is to expand it so that every suicide survivor in the state has support quickly after a loss.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

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