Making sense of my son’s suicide
By Glynis Horning
September is World Suicide Prevention Month, and World Suicide Prevention Day is on September 10. Glynis Horning is a well-known South African mental health journalist dealing with the reality of her son’s suicide.
An estimated one in ten South Africans experience major depression at some point in their life. The book attempts to understand the realities of depression and suicide, removing some of the stigma surrounding suicide.
A compelling and agonising story
Durban-based journalist Glynis Horning and her husband Chris woke one Sunday morning almost two years ago to the devastating discovery of their 25-year-old son Spencer dead in his bed.
Horning’s story chronicles a parent’s worst nightmare. Establishing that his death was suicide, Horning embarks on a journey of anguished self-recrimination. Should she not have seen the signs? Could she somehow have prevented it? As she struggles with Spencer’s decision to end his life, she has to learn to understand what the depths of depression entail. We feel Horning’s pain, and learn to understand and feel Spencer’s pain, at a visceral level.
Surrounded by loving family and friends, Horning pieces together the puzzle of Spencer’s death, writing with a brutal and heart-searing intensity of grief and loss, but also of the joys of celebrating her son’s life. This book will touch anyone who has experienced a mental health journey directly or indirectly, or a searing loss. Her wisdom and insight are extraordinary.
About the author
Glynis Horning is an award-winning freelance writer whose assignments have taken her from the townships of apartheid South Africa to the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire, from the Amazon jungle to ice floes in Patagonia.
Horning is the recipient of the Discovery Health Journalism Award for Best Health Consumer Reporting and Feature Writing, the Pfizer Mental Health Journalism Award and a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism. She was Galliova Health Writer of the Year in 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2023. Nothing could have prepared her for the loss of her son at 25. She lives in Durban with her husband Chris and son Ewan.
- PUBLISHER | Bookstorm |
- ISBN | 9781928257929 |
- Recommended Retail Price | R320.00 |
- Classification | Biography, Memoir |
For more information | Janine Daniel | +27 (0)83 327 3393 | mail me |
