SILENT GRIEF, published twenty years ago, was the first major book to offer those left behind an in-depth look at their experience.  Jessica Kingsley Publishers is publishing a revised edition to meet the continuous requests from survivors for copies of SILENT GRIEF (March 2007, Jessica Kingsley Publishers Revised Paperback, $19.95; ISBN: 978-1-84310-847-4; 224 pages).  A once taboo subject, suicide has become more openly discussed and examined.  Since the first 1987 edition of SILENT GRIEF, the American Suicide Foundation was established and the previously existing American Association for Suicidology has grown from a handful of members to over one thousand chapters.  What has not changed are the needs of those who have lost a loved one to suicide. 
 

SILENT GRIEF allows survivors to understand that their experience is shared by millions of others, and to learn what help can be obtained from that knowledge.  The authors write in their Preface, “SILENT GRIEF is not about sadness—which is inevitable—but about unnecessary painful, prolonged and unyielding grief, the kind of grief that makes other joys in life impossible.  We continue to hope that his book will help survivors to go on with their lives and go on to find those joys.”  The revised edition has been fully updated and describes new forms of support including internet forums, as well as addressing changing societal attitudes to suicide and an increased willingness to discuss suicide publicly. 
 

Christopher Lukas is a suicide survivor himself—several members of his family have taken their own lives—and the book draws on his own experiences, as well as those of numerous other suicide survivors.  He has updated his personal contributions for the revised edition.  He is a 45-year veteran of the public television world, a writer and television producer whose documentaries include films on end-of-life care psychology, and the arts.
These inspiring personal testimonies are combined with the professional expertise of Dr. Henry M. Seiden, a psychologist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist living a practicing in New York.  He has taught and supervised in a number of graduate schools, clinics, hospitals, and training institutes in New York City.