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This is an account of the suicide of a young woman who had been raped at the age of thirteen, by five boys. Personal and professional implications will be discussed, including the experience of grief and trauma, the impact on work life and confidence, and the challenge to one's values and beliefs. The need for information about and support through legal processes will be explored. The medico-legal assumption that life is to be protected at all costs is examined. The importance for all to identify, understand and review our deepest values about life and death with clients and colleagues is asserted. KEYWORDS. Suicide, grief, suicide-professional impact

Despite their core place in family life, grief and loss have received only sporadic attention in the family therapy literature. In examining this neglect we briefly revisit earlier family therapy understandings of grief and loss in families, and present a theoretical framework (drawing on Worden, 1982; Walsh & McGoldrick, 1991) that comfortably integrates a wide range of family grief experiences including death and more ambiguous losses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]