Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2012, 9 26 services for the bereaved requires also a good understanding of the bereavement process and the needs of the survivors as a group as well as acknowledging the individual differences between the bereaved. 3. Is Suicide Bereavement Different from Other Types of Bereavement? There seems to be a gap between personal accounts of individual survivors, for example first person accounts written by survivors themselves, e.g., [9] and narratives of clinicians working with the bereaved, and outcomes of research studies [10]. In the words of Jordan [11], “there is an apparent contradiction between the perceptions of people who are bereaved by suicide and the clinicians who work closely with them, and researchers who study survivors from a greater distance with the tools of social science” (p. 92). The former indicate the uniqueness of bereavement after suicide. They focus on the experience of guilt and shame, social stigma and isolation, as well as the desperate search for the meaning of the death by the bereaved and his or her increased risk of suicide, e.g., [12]. The latter often find more similarities than differences among different groups of the bereaved in regards to major themes, the trajectory and duration of bereavement, e.g., [11,13,14]. The existing contradiction is perpetuated by the (self-)selection bias between the clinical groups and groups included in the studies (e.g., people seeking professional help might experience more so-called prolonged or complicated grief than individuals participating in bereavement surveys) as well as methodological problems of many studies, including small sample sizes, lack of control groups and lack of follow-up of the bereaved over longer periods of time [10,15]. In an attempt to explain the differences observed in clinical practice and research studies, Jordan & McIntosh [14] have proposed a framework encompassing various levels of grief reactions. According to this framework, in suicide bereavement one can recognize reactions present in bereavement after all types of death, such as sorrow and yearning to be reunited with the deceased, reactions characteristic for bereavement after unexpected deaths, e.g., shock and sense of unreality about the death, and elements of bereavement after violent deaths, e.g., trauma of finding a mutilated body and shattered illusion of personal invulnerability. In addition to these shared reactions, suicide survivors experience features which seem unique to suicide bereavement, such as anger at the deceased for “choosing” death over life and the feeling of abandonment. There is also accumulating clinical and empirical evidence pointing to the existence of subgroups of suicide survivors. For example, it has been reported [15] that survivors’ reactions differ as a consequence of previous history of suicidality of the deceased and the expectation of death. Those on a long-term “suicide watch” might experience after the suicide the feeling of relief (often subjectively perceived as unacceptable and coupled with guilt), while those for whom the death came unexpectedly might react with a shock, accompanied by numbness and disbelief. 4. What Is “Postvention” and What Are the Needs of Suicide Survivors? Postvention can be defined as “activities developed by, with or for suicide survivors, in order to facilitate recovery after suicide and to prevent adverse outcomes including suicidal behaviour” [2], (p. 43). As such, postvention strategies aim to tackle the needs of the bereaved, and can be operationalized from two complementary perspectives: the clinical perspective, i.e., the perspective of