Anyone experienced finding a deceased person?

[user1471503652]

I really didn't know where to post this.

A week or so ago I found a man dead. A stranger, he had taken his own life.

After a few days of feeling ok-ish, I have now entered a tough phase. It's sunk in now, and I've realised that I'm never going to get the image out of my head; I just have to live with it.

I was wondering if anyone had experienced anything similar? If so, what stages did you go through.

My husband has been pretty useless. He was comforting on the first night but I tried to talk about it with him over text yesterday as I had just spoken to the police, and he answered one word then rattled on about something at work

I brought it up over cooking dinner and he mumbled something then stared at his phone. I don't think he sees how this has affected me? My friends have all been supportive as has my mum, luckily.

The police have recommended the Samaritans to call, plus someone local to speak to if I feel the need. I thought I would reach out over Mumsnet first as it feels safer over a keyboard.

He was a total stranger to me but i feel like he'll always be part of me now if that makes sense.

Hope someone can offer some experience or advice.

yes it is often later that the brain suddenly realises..." shit what was that?" after pretending "nope, it did not happen" for a bit

people need to talk. I spent the first three days last week telling the world and his wife about dd's allergic reaction... it is part of processing. so tell away.

did you happen across the body while you were out and about or as part of your work?

My DP is a police officer and I'll never forget the first time he had to deal with a dead body. I waited up all night for him to get home thinking he would need support but he just wanted to go straight to sleep, almost as if it was an everyday thing.

It wasn't until about a week later and all of a sudden he wanted to talk about it. (I know they technically shouldn't, but without speaking to someone about it all police would be seriously disturbed!) He worked through the initial shock of it all and fast forward a few months and he had a whole different perspective.

Death is a part of everyday life. It's never pretty. He's now pretty much seen it all. I'm sure he could reel off the names of all the dead people he's come across. But after a period of time his emotion towards it fades.

I'm sure with time, you'll look back without the horror you feel and you'll be able to move forward.

DH has. It was a friend of his who had been ill and the wife had asked him to check on him and he was dead. He was so upset. He talked about it then but not since.
I've seen relatives but only in a funeral setting. Still think about how they looked and I get a lump in my throat.
Finding someone dead is a shock OP especially in tragic circumstances so I'd definitely find someone who is able to listen and give you some comfort.

I'm so sorry you're having a bad time , totally understandable, it must have been a shock .

I found my NDN dead , we hadn't long been moved into our house (about 6 months) when I realised we hadn't seen him around. He rented his house so I contacted the agents who told me he'd gone on an extended holiday , I thought nothing more about it . Then a man knocked at my door (NDN friend )asking if I'd seen him , I told him about the extended holiday and the friend said this wasn't true !

Anyway , we gained access to the house and found him dead - he'd obviously been there a long time . His phone was next to his hand and I felt (and still do) absolutely awful that he'd been lying there , maybe trying to call for help and I didn't know . He had no family so no one to really miss him , which is even sadder.

I was wracked with guilt for a long time and the image of him haunted me , but it has faded and now I just feel sad if I think of him.

I think the circumstances in which a person dies makes a difference and also if you didn't expect to see a deceased person it can come as a big shock.

You will probably never forget this and talking about it will hopefully help. I wonder if victim support is worth a try ?

I meant to say You will never forget this but it will fade xx

I have, but she'd been dead for a very long time. This meant I didn't have to worry about trying to save her or ponder what would have happened if I got there sooner.

They were unable to identify her (as far as I know - this was some years ago).

I have seen someone who had taken their own life on my way to school. He did it in a really public place, he hung himself. It did affect me, but the image is blurry. I saw someone who was on a bridge also being talked down a few years ago, that for me was most upsetting and affected me greatly even though because I later found out she had jumped. I found a man also due to the nature of my job, but it was natural causes and he just looked asleep. Death is a part of life but coming across a suicide suddenly is traumatic, it is natural for you to feel this way. A few counselling sessions to process your thoughts maybe would help. I am not sure finding out more about him would though.

It might be worth looking in to ways to deal with post traumatic stress as this sounds like a form of it. My friend suffered a month after something very similar and talking to a therapist for a bit really helped.

He was hanging in a tree and I saw him walking out of my office block, a short cut to my car. I have continued to walk that way. They've cut a lot of the tree away but it Stands out even more to me now. I just can't help but wonder if he was there when I was walking from my car that morning, did I just walk past?

It has been so helpful reading others experiences and advice.

I saw a little girl being carried by paramedics who were running and shouting for people to move, this was in my town centre. I burst into tears immediately which is unlike me but the scene was so shocking, she was obviously unconscious. I couldn't think of anything else until I found out what happened a few days later, and I was devastated to find she died. She had a cardiac arrest and was probably already dead when I saw her.

I felt real grief afterwards. I kept having flashbacks of how she looked and I wanted to talk about it with anyone who would listen, but I don't work or see many people so I was limited to dh and dm. Dm was useless and changed the subject when I brought it up. Dh was sympathetic and comforting but had no idea what to say.

I posted on here about it and received some wonderful support and realised I had a form of ptsd. I felt I wanted to go to her funeral but that seemed intrusive. I found out what I could about her though and that helped a little.

Five or so years later I still feel sad when I think of her but nothing like the raw pain I felt at the time.

Keep talking about it op, on here or to people such as the Samaritans. It helps you process it and eventually you will feel better

Call the Samaritans or ask your GP if they can refer you anywhere. I saw a suicide victim when I was a child. They were sitting in their car down a country lane and had used a shotgun. My parents thought the best way for me to deal with it was never talk of it again. As an adult I had counseling for something entirely different and all this stress and anxiety about that event was unearthed that I had just thought was normal and I had to cope with myself. You don't need to deal with it yourself there are people to help you.

I also think that our reactions to certain life events take us by surprise , so it's not just the event that we struggle with but the fact that we didn't expect to feel that way either iyswim .

When I was 8 I was a passenger on a train and someone jumped off a bridge and landed under it, I can still remember the sound it made and the sound of brakes and the intense heat as it was high summer and a packed train and I also remember my mum saying 'don't look don't look' over and over again in my ear and hugging me (though it was too late I'd already seen things), as he ended up quite near to where we were in the carriage and that lots of people were very upset and that there was complete silence for what seemed like ages after it happened. I often think of that man 25 years later, and the effect his actions had on so many of us in that carriage, the poor driver and the people that had to pick him up. It was horrific.

I would say talk about it if you need to, and expect it to pop into your head unexpectedly for a while - the littlest and sometimes quite obscure reasons trigger it sometimes. I think maybe as I was so young it stayed very very vivid for a long time but I never spoke about it and I think it probably would have helped if I had. My mum seemed almost unaffected by it, so we never really spoke about it since and haven't for at least a decade now.

I arrived at a supermarket car park a couple of minutes after someone had taken their own life by jumping off the top floor. I saw the person on a stretcher. Just a glimpse from the corner of my eye.

I was asked by a member of the public who was sort of marshalling people away from the area to use another exit to get to the pedestrianised area. It was the first time we had been to that car park.

I'm assuming the person died. There was police tape around what was now a possible crime scene where his body was taken from on a stretcher by paramedics. The next day there were lots of flowers near the spot.

I read in the local paper that it was a young lad that had died.

I thought how bad must he have been feeling to want to end his life like that. How does someone so young feel so bad and have such a sad life that they end it by jumping to their death on a cold wet January day.

A few years ago I witnessed a bad road accident. It was on a country road and as people were getting out of their cars I heard screaming. I then saw a car had hit a tree and the driver was clearly dead. This accident was tragic and affected me for a long time. I wanted to know all about the person who died. I went to their funeral. I didn't know the person but having seen them in that undignified state of death I felt I needed to pay my respects

I'm sorry you have experienced this op

On my honeymoon dh and I saw 2 dead bodies floating in the sea. Dh swam out with another man who was there with his wife and young teenage daughters and brought their bodies back in to the beach where we lay towels over them until authorities came.
Sadly they were Syrian who had come over in a small boat which had capsized killing 12 out of the 13 people aboard
Dh was affected that evening as one woman's face was clear in his mind. I was upset for a long time especially as media coverage of Syria was so promenent at the time.

Sadly yes.

I saw someone (very briefly) who was stabbed and later died - I was about 7/8, and I didn't see anything graphic, was just aware of the fight and later found out he'd died. I was rushed past the scene by my parents. It didn't affect me at all, tbh.

There was then a fatal motorbike crash outside my primary school a year later - again, it was not a pleasant - it happened directly opposite the school playground, but the teachers rushed everyone in - but the poor chap just looked knocked out on the floor. It hasn't affected me either.

Then when I was 18 I found someone very close to me dead - massive shock. It was initially treated as murder - turned out it was natural causes but undiagnosed at the time. I had tremendous anxiety after that - my brain locked into my surroundings and I suddenly became phobic of everything from closed doors to microwaves! It took a year to get past the acute anxiety but then ten years later I started having nightmares and panic and it was diagnosed as PTSD. I'm doing better now but every detail of that day is etched in my brain and it's horrifying to recall. I never talked about it and it came back to haunt me big time.

I saw my GPs at the chapel of rest - they looked peaceful and it was quite a relaxed experience, despite being sad.

Anyway. I've learned that the difficulty comes when you're directly involved in some way and/or when it's someone close to you. I think an unnatural or traumatic death will provoke a bigger reaction than a natural passing - but if it's your first real experience of seeing a dead body it's bound to have an impact regardless. You won't feel the acute horror forever, but you'll probably always remember it, although the memories will be fewer and farther between as time passes.

Make sure you talk about it and get any feelings you have out. It's trying to suppress it that causes problems further down the line. Do you not have a police liaison who can help you access support? If not, find friends with a sympathetic ear.

(And re your DH, I suspect he has no idea what to say)

I saw a man fall through the air as he jumped from a high bridge I was at the bottom. Will never forget the image. I immediately burst into tears.

I just wanted to add that the comments re people who have seen this in a work capacity (myself included) on a regular basis and get used to it bears no relevance to how you deal with your situation and what your feeling. Totally different thing. Just wanted to add incase it had made you feel like you were inadequate somehow in how your dealing with it x

OP, I'm really sorry to hear you're going through this. A couple years ago I popped in to see a relative, they had collapsed, no heart beat but were warm. I got them on the floor and did mouth to mouth until the ambulance arrived. I then calmly called some relatives to come and help, and one of them took me home, I was upset but sort of ok.
After a couple days I started having nightmares and eventually got so sleep deprived I started seeing things and thought I'd better see the GP. They were helpful, suggested some bereavement support and gave me some sleeping tablets to combat the sleep deprivation. Once I had sat down and told someone all about it, I started to feel more settled and found I could accept what had happened better. I had struggled to talk to my family because they were also grieving but talking to someone else really helped.
Haven't forgotten obviously but you can get over this. Find someone to listen as you spill it all out. I only needed the tablets for a few weeks but they helped me get out of a downward spiral of can't talk, can't sleep, can't talk

I'm so sorry you experienced this. I can only guess how traumatic it was.

When my grandmother died, at home, the Marie curie nurses saw to her, then my aunt said " you can go in now, she looks fine".

I walked in and it hit me so hard , I looked at my aunt and said " why did you say she looks fine, she looks dead" and she did. I was so so upset by it. My aunt was devastated and had meant to cause no harm. But it floored me. Totally floored me. She was gone and I was looking at what was clearly a dead body.

I have a friend who is a police officer. He was called to a road traffic accident to sign off the scene. He told me he stood and looked for about thirty seconds thinking " what's wrong with this" before his brain kicked in and realised the driver had been decapitated. He simply saw it and couldn't interpret it. His brain refused to accept what he was looking at.

Death is horrible. Unless you've seen a dead body I don't think anyone can understand the impact, and to come across a dead body unexpectedly must have a terrible impact 💐

I came across the scene of a road accident a good few years ago. There was one person lying on the road looking very dead. There was someone else lying on the verge looking a bit dead.

It was before mobile phones, I assume the emergency services had been called.

However, I have been told that when someone has been knocked unconscious they look as good as dead.

Two years ago I saw a pregnant woman who had been stabbed to death as I was cycling on the canal.

I wasn't the first on the scene and there were already people phoning for help so I didn't think I should stop, but I have never forgotten what I saw.l

These things stay with you and it's perfectly normal to feel this way.

I've lost several patients (I work in Mental health so it's less common then on med wards for example). It's definitely not the same as your situation but I still remember all of them, it always effects me and really I just have to got through a briefer grieving process. I've been to a couple long term patients funerals, I find if you can go to the funeral it really helps give closure.

Death is hard and sad and you're perfectly normal for feeling as you do. I find death kind of grabs hold of you a bit, and for a while changes your whole perspective on the world. For a while this can feel very dark but it gradually eases.

I once saw a man die - he'd had a heart attack and crashed his car. It was nearly 30 years ago, but I can still remember it now. Passersby gave him mouth to mouth and pumped his chest for what seemed like a very long time.

Sorry not really any help.