Assessing abuse in female suicide survivors.

The article reports a study examining the level of rejection of the suicide victim by the surviving widow and the suicide survivor's experiences of abuse. The 49 female suicide survivors who participated in this study were part of a larger nursing postvention study. Descriptive statistics and the nonparametric Spearman correlation for a two-tailed test (a < 0.05) were used to analyze the data. Results showed that 65.3% of the survivors of suicide had experienced some form of abuse, the most frequent being verbal abuse. Experiences of abuse may affect the bereavement process and coping strategies in surviving the suicide of a spouse.