When you visit a mother to learn about her child’s suicide, expect to stay awhile. Expect to be asked if you want to visit his room. Or flip through his book of baby pictures. Or see his soccer trophy, which you notice looks identical to your son’s soccer trophy.
“She starts crying, and you start crying,” said University of Utah psychiatrist Doug Gray, recalling his interviews with families whose children have died by suicide.
The conversations were part of Gray’s research into why the number of Utah youths dying by suicide was increasing in the late 1990s.