William Feigelman

William Feigelman, PhD, is Professor Emeritus and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Nassau Community College (Garden City, New York), where he has taught for more than 44 years and still teaches part-time. Author and co-author of seven books and more than 40 journal articles, he has written on a wide variety of social science subjects including child adoptions, youth alcohol and drug abuse, problem gambling, tobacco use and cessation, and intergroup relations. Since 2002, after his son Jesse's suicide, Dr. Feigelman has focused his professional writings on youth suicide and suicide bereavement. This work has appeared in Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, Death Studies, Omega: Journal of Death and Dying and Illness, Crisis and Loss. He is a member of the American Association of Suicidology and the Association for Death Education and Counseling, a frequent presenter at bereavement conferences in the U.S., Canada, and Japan, and a co-facilitator of a survivors' support group

Articles:

Drug and Alcohol Deaths

In this episode, the authors of Devastating Losses, William and Beverly Feigelman, join Drs. Gloria and Heidi Horsley. The couple lost their 32-year-old son to suicide related to substance abuse. He was living in New York with his fiancé when he hanged himself. Although Jesse had a long history of substance abuse—and Beverly, who was a specialized therapist treating substance abuse patients—they never saw the death coming. Suicide and drug/alcohol losses are often stigmatized and disenfranchised. For the Feigelmans, they experienced disenfranchised loss doubly, since Jesse’s death was caused by both substance abuse and suicide. Vanessa McGannon also joins the […]

William Feigelman Ph.D. and Beverly Feigelman LCSW: Drug and Alcohol Deaths

The authors of Devastating Losses, William and Beverly Feigelman join Drs. Gloria and Heidi Horsley to discuss drug and alcohol related deaths. They lost their son to substance abuse and have committed their lives and careers to helping others prevent such losses or heal from them. The Feigelmans took a narrative and wove it into an immense amount of research. Beverly is a social worker, William is a professor at a private college, and they share their story of how their son took his own life after struggling with substance abuse. Healing losses with service is one of the best […]

Profile of Drug-Death Bereaved Parents

This article is adapted from a longer selection first appearing in The Compassionate Friends We Need Not Walk Alone Magazine, (Winter2011/Spring 2012 issue). Parents losing children to a drug overdose or a drug-related death face an especially daunting post-loss adaptation challenge, when compared to other bereaved parents whose children died from suicides, automobile accidents and natural causes. Summing up our survey research results, based on 48 drug-death-bereaved parents, 462 suicide-bereaved, 37 mostly accidental deaths and 24 natural death cases, findings showed drug-death bereaved faced similar social stigmatization from socially significant others as suicide survivors did. What sets these mourners apart […]

The Stigma of Suicide and How It Affects Survivors’ Healing

In this short paper, I condense an article that first appeared in the International Association of Suicide Prevention Postvention Taskforce Newsletter (Vol. 3. No. 5, Oct. 2008). Today analysts claim suicide stigma is subtle with blame being cast upon survivors and survivors being subjected to informal isolation and shunning. It is often noted that stigmatization promotes more grief difficulties and mental health problems for survivors. But, we were surprised to find no one has verified whether these assertions are supported with systematic evidence. To investigate this, my co-investigators and I collected surveys from a sample of parents losing children to […]

Does a Child’s Death Adversely Affect Marital Stability?

Bereavement is a topic rife with stereotypical thinking among the general public. One often hears the view expressed that a child’s death may have damaging effects upon a couple’s marriage. Actually, the limited research on this topic does show evidence of increased conflict and marital discord among couples experiencing a still birth or a neo-natal child loss. However, little research has been conducted regarding marital stability after an older children dies, or when the deceased child perishes from self-induced causes, like suicide or a drug overdose. In our Devastating Losses study, my coauthors and I sought to explore this question […]

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