Suicide Bereavement Among Black-Americans: Evidence From the General Social Survey

Limited research attention has focused on examining the diverging adaptations of American Blacks and Whites to suicide losses. We utilized the 2016 General Social Survey, which included questions related to experiencing suicide bereavement, investigating hypotheses past studies suggested predicting Blacks face more grieving difficulties than their White counterparts. Comparing White respondents (n = 1,051) to the Blacks (n = 242) we examined convergences and divergences between each in their suicide exposures and bereavements, closeness to the deceased, time since loss, differences in depression and other mental health assessments. With t-tests and Chi-square significance tests we examined whether the Black suicide bereaved respondents showed evidence of heightened mental health problems compared to the Whites. This data did not confirm any evidence of heightened grief or mental health problems among the Black respondents. Owing to the limited number of measurements of mental health assessments more research will be needed to confirm these findings.