The Role of the Forensic Nurse in the Assessment of Abuse Among Female Suicide Survivors

This article reports on a study examining the suicide survivor’s experience of abuse. The 49 female survivors were part of a larger nursing intervention study. Descriptive statistics & non-parametric Spearman Correlation for a two-tailed test (alpha <0.05) were used to analyze the data. Results show that 65.3% of the survivors had experienced some form of abuse, the most frequent being verbal abuse. Experiences of abuse may affect the bereavement process & coping strategies in surviving the suicide of a spouse. (44 refs.)