Can suicidal tendencies be genetic?

[mumoftwolitttles]

My husbands dad committed suicide when my husband was 10 and he was 36. My husband tried to commit suicide, prior to meeting me at 27 and wanted to attempt again at 32 but thankfully with crisis team's intervention and me noticing what was happening we avoided disaster. He's now in his early fourties and has had counselling and been on, and subsequently come off anti depressants and, touch wood, has been in the best mental health he ever has been. Being a dad seems to of really helped him, he is adamant he will never do to our sons what his dad to him, and actually when our first son was born went through a very angry stage where he just got hit with so much rage about what his dad to him. Again, we worked through this and he sought help from a counsellor.

I'm proud of him, and I'm happy to finally be in a place where I feel confident that he won't try again, after years of worrying that he would, and panicking if I ever lost contact with him for a few hours. I feel like I was on high alert for a period of time, and I now feel like I've transferred that anxiety about will he kill himself on to my kids. I have two sons, both very small at the moment, but I fear so much that they could do this when they are young men. Are these fears rooted in any truth, can things like this be genetic? Part of me doesn't want to ever tell them about the family history but so they don't get that planted in their heads as something that happens in our family, but my husband says if they ask what happened to his dad he will tell them, when they're old enough of course

Sorry for the rambling!

I'm so sorry for everything your husband and you have gone through. I'm not an expert but I imagine the trauma your husband experienced in losing his father to suicide would have impacted upon him and his own feelings/mental health. I'm sure that your own children are in a much more secure environment with regards to emotions/mental health and know that they can talk about their feelings/no problem is insurmountable etc. Has your husband had therapy? If this is something you're really worried about, I wonder if either couples or family therapy would be useful too.

Ps, also it's very different for them to eventually know that their grandfather died from suicide when it seems age appropriate (late teens?) to knowing that their father attempted it. I'm not sure whether the latter would be something I'd ever disclose, or certainly not until they are 25+.
Its one thing to say "dad used to struggle with his mental health but he got help and is much better now" and another to disclose all the details. I think maybe when they're teens in the interest of promoting healthy acceptance of mental health problems it would be possibly healthy to say we all sometimes struggle etc.

I can't speak to the suicide angle, but of the generations of my mother's/my family of which I'm aware, (1) my mother's father had lifelong poor MH and was hospitalised on a number of occasions, and given electroshock therapy; (2) his son from his first marriage (my mother's half-brother) had extremely poor MH after going missing and cutting off contact with his family after he emigrated to the UK, and being found a broken man, years later; (3) my mother's full brother (from her father's second marriage) has no diagnosis, but is an extremely anxious, depressive, fragile man who has struggled with ordinary life; (4) and my own brother, while he is married and holds down a job, is a depressed and anxious person.

I don't know whether any of them made suicide attempts. It would never be talked about in the family. My mother strongly stigmatises mental illness, and I only found out about my grandfather's hospitalisation in the psychiatric hospital when I was researching family history.

It was why I was hoping my own baby would be a daughter. All the women in my mother's family appear unaffected. I had a DS, and am watching him like a hawk, and making sure he knows there's a place in the world for his emotions.

A novel based on real life events (and which I recommend to anyone because it's brilliant, funny and humane) is Miriam Toews' All My Puny Sorrows. Her sister died by suicide 12 years after her father did the same.

Best wishes to you, OP. I understand the feeling of being on high alert. You sound as if you're doing all the right things.