The recent suicide deaths of Sydney Aiello and Calvin Desir, survivors of last year’s mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, unleashed collective grief online as the public mourned the loss of two teenagers who’d endured an unthinkable tragedy.
That grief was only compounded when the Newtown, Connecticut, police confirmed Monday that Jeremy Richman, a father who’d lost his 6-year-old daughter in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, died in an apparent suicide.
There are no simple explanations when someone dies by suicide; numerous risk factors, like easy access to lethal means, barriers to mental health treatment, and a history of mental illness, can increase the likelihood that someone will take their own life. But these deaths forced the public to confront the potential ripple effects of surviving a mass shooting, which has led to calls for increased research on how survivors fare over the course of their lives. Read more…
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