Counselor speaks from experiences
by Michele Whitehead, reporter

    Suicide is something that is an option to every person in our society, a speaker told a NE Campus student group recently.

    Connie Burdick, a licensed master social worker, presented Families Surviving Suicide to A Positive Today (APT), a student support group sponsored by Dolores Sutter, associate professor of mental health.

    “However it is not a personal option for most people,” she said.

    Burdick’s husband took his own life in 1989 after several years of dealing with mental illness and addiction.

    “Life becomes so overwhelming that it seems there is no hope to those who commit suicide,” she said.

    Between 22 and 25 thousand people commit suicide each year. That number doubles or triples with those who are not known suicides and whose deaths are ruled accidental.

    Suicide is the sixth leading cause of death in adults and the second leading cause of death in youth, Burdick said. The majority of suicides today are found in youth and white Protestant males over 65 years old.

    “Every six minutes, someone tries to kill himself,” she said.

    Families dealing with a suicide go through several stages of grief, just as anyone dealing with the death of a loved one. Feelings of guilt and anger sometimes follow.

    “Death is a part of living. Regardless of how it happens, we have to figure out how to keep on living,” she said.

    Burdick said the best advice she received when dealing with her husband’s suicide was to wait and not do anything for one year.

    “You have to take time out before you get exhausted,” she said.
By not selling her house, dating or making any other major decisions for a year, Burdick said she gained time to heal.

    “If you resist the mourning, you interfere with the body’s natural ability to repair,” she said.

    A licensed chemical dependency counselor with her own private practice in Fort Worth, Burdick said that since her husband’s suicide, she now uses her experiences to help others.