Post-Traumatic Growth(PTG)

I recently attended a suicide support group that was meant to teach parents and educators how to support teens and children with grief. I will be sharing some of my takeaways from the session for some of my first posts. If anyone wants to join a support group, the group to sign up with is called Coping After Suicide—to learn more, you can visit www.copingaftersuicide.com which I will also add to our resources page. Often, after someone dies by suicide, we focus on the bad reactions of people through grief. It is obviously important to pay attention to how we can support youth throughout bad reactions to grief but we also need to talk about the good that they often make through hardship and death.

Often teens or kids that have experienced a death by suicide or some other other hardship grow to be more sensitive and more compassionate to the difficulties of others in the world. The tendency of children affected by suicide towards helping others is manifested through students changing their paths to study psychology or social work and simply engage in any type of volunteering tiime(for profit or not) to helping others or a bigger cause. Even if students affected by suicide don’t engage with philanthropic work directly related to suicide, they may feel begin work with immigrants or animal shelters or any number of causes.

As indicated by the name, such a desire to help resulting from grief is known as Post-Traumatic Growth. Aswell as paying attention to how we can help support youth through emotions like anger or sadness, we should also support them through their growth and achievement that results from making light out of darkness. The mention of PTG resonated with me as this entire organization that I hope to continue developing and expanding has really been my own PTG.