Yeah, I’ve worked at a couple places where someone died, and it was definitely acknowledged by management and I feel like it would be incredibly weird not to.

At one place, a guy who had left the company a few months prior died in a car crash. The guy had a wife and newborn baby. The CEO shared the news and the company made a contribution to a GoFundMe for the wife and baby. I think the company offered grief counseling.

At another, larger company, someone died shortly after I joined, so I never knew them. We were all notified, once again I think a grief counselor came, and the guy’s desk was left as a memorial until we moved offices a few months later.

Reactions from management and everyone else is typically different for suicides than for car crashes and other causes. In my experience, suicides are hushed and not discussed while car crashes and heart attacks are. It’s a terrible double-standard.

It may be because there is evidence that discussing suicide increases the likelihood of more suicides. I'm sure there's more nuance that could be done in theory / I would assume there exists some "right" way to discuss it that may actually be healthier, but it's easier to just look at studies and say best to just avoid it altogether.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207262

> This evidence is derived from three bodies of research: studies of the impact of media reporting on suicide, studies of suicide clusters, and studies of the impact on adolescents of exposure to a suicidal peer.

It later clarifies that the clustering evidence is only focused on teenagers and young adults.

I would assume that those 3 cases are not applicable to the vast majority of full time working environments. If people are using this study as a reason to avoid discussing death by suicide in the workforce, it's because they just don't want to deal with it. If they were motivated by a higher moral purpose, they could ask for advice from a mental health professional or non-profit.

While there may be some cases where it is the right thing to do, silence by default perpetuates the shame and taboo around the subject which can affect the living and prevent them from seeking support.

This is why it's illegal to report deaths as suicides in New Zealand media as well.

https://mentalhealth.org.nz/media/reporting-and-portrayal-of...

That link says something different: "a description of the death as a suicide before the coroner has released their findings and stated the death was a suicide"

Sorry about that! I should learn to read a bit more. It's very rare you ever see any reporting done on suicides. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/80143183/new-zealand-suicid...

I guess to be safe they sort of publish it without many details. Just "Person found dead at such and such".

Same. I don't think it's with mal intent, I think it's the result of a (misguided) attempt to give the passed privacy or spare them the embarrassment/humiliation/stigma that some people (mainly those who have never struggled with depression/suicide) think is attached to it. A good friend of mine committed suicide several years ago, and it was like pulling teeth trying to get somebody to just tell me WTF was going on. The most I could get was "Douglas passed away." Nobody even wanted to say it was a suicide!

We really need to start talking more openly about these things. If your coworker dies in a car crash nobody feels like they can't talk about the car crash or even acknowledge the cause of death. Yet with suicide, nobody wants to say it. The result is even more pain mixed with frustration.

I've had the same experience - when someone passed, no one would tell me the cause of death. I surmised the cause because of that, but never got external confirmation. It was just so ... strange.

Family and friends can feel blame, or anguish over the suicide being condemned to hell (Catholic doctrine until quite recently), so it might be insensitive to highlight that.

Not acknowledging a death is wild, but a lot of organizations normalize only discussing positive project-related accomplishments.

When the day-to-day doesn't address the simple human aspects of work, it becomes even harder to address the difficult aspects.

This is an interesting take. I strongly suspect you’re right about this, but would like to find more data to support it.

I do not know if it is the norm but I have also worked at an organization where one employee committed suicide. Leadership said nothing and everything was toned down. Some people spoke up and complained though. My interpretation is that the response was a combination of culture (although suicide is not "taboo" here it is not a preferred topic) and not wanting to bring undue attention to the organization.

What do you mean “said nothing” as in they stopped showing up and management pretended nothing happened?

Or the person died and they didn’t say it was a suicide.

Because if it’s the 2nd, that seems pretty normal. My right to know doesnt trump the family’s right to privacy.

I'd like to think that if you spend 8 hours a day with someone everyday, and suddenly they are gone, it would be a decent thing to tell you what happened to them.

Colleagues knew it was suicide and wanted to talk about it. Leadership did not want to discuss the issue. Normal, as you write.

But coworkers could discuss among themselves?

This just seems bizarre to me to expect a special “all hands” session or something to discuss this.

Provide counseling services? Sure.

Put a “how Jimmy died” meeting on everyone’s calendar? That’s odd.

Framing discussions around cause of death as privacy is a double standard. If you say someone died in a car crash, nobody gasps and tells you to respect the deceased's or their family's privacy. It's so extreme that is anyone even brings up privacy with regard to a death or cause of death everyone assumes they committed suicide, or did something criminal that ended in their death, or something else negative. Cause of death is posted in the newspapers and otherwise discussed in public all the time, there is no right to privacy around that piece of information.

No offense, but when a coworker dies it’s not about you.

When a coworker died at work we usually understood the family was the one that needed support, not us. And if the family asked for privacy, then they got it.

And if any of us needed support, we helped each other. We didn’t need HR to pencil in a meeting.

And no, when someone dies their cause of death is not automatically public and most people (including employers) respect that.

Apathy is the path of least resistance.

Maybe if you are apathetic by nature?

Depends on the company. I know for a fact that if I died tomorrow, only two people would actually notice at all and neither of them are coworkers.

It doesn't seem particularly helpful to send out a notifications to people other then those that would be affected by having to take on my workload. And what good would come from them being told I was dead vs just left?

Not noticing doesn't mean the world doesn't care. There are a lot of reasons people vanish and it's harder to notice the absence of something than its existence, and people usually vanish for positive reasons, so I think nothing of it. I cried after discovering some people I hadn't known personally but were adjacent to me have died. I didn't notice their absence but I can empathize with the suffering they felt before their death, or the feelings of their family coming to grip with their absence.

While I have a strong emotional reaction to it, I don't think it's a bad thing, it is a part of life and a reminder for me to savor life.