Telling a Child Someone Has Died: What to Say at Every Age

You probably do not have much time. Someone has died, a child is in the next room or in the back of the car, and what you need is not a theory of how children understand death. You need a sentence you can say out loud without it breaking in the middle. Explaining death to a child is a different conversation at four than it is at nine, and this page gives you the words for each age.

Telling a child someone has died is a conversation rather than an announcement, so this page starts with the sentence. Then the words for each age from toddler to teenager, four conversations written out in full, honest answers to the four questions children ask, the phrases to avoid, a decision sheet for the funeral, what the first weeks look like, and who to ask for help.

This is a guide to a conversation, not clinical advice. The services at the end are the people who do this for a living, and ringing one in the first week is reasonable, not a sign that anything has gone wrong.

The First Sentence, and Why It Has to Contain the Word Died

The clearest model opening in print comes from the Dougy Center, the children's grief centre in Portland, Oregon:

Honey, I have very sad news. Daddy died. His heart stopped working. He had a heart attack and the doctors weren't able to fix his heart.

Four sentences. It warns the child that something is coming, says the fact with the word died in the second sentence rather than the tenth, explains dying as something a child can picture, and names the cause so the child does not have to invent one.

Say died, not a softer word. Child Bereavement UK puts it in a line: it is important to use the real words, dead and died. A child told that Grandad was lost will want to know who is looking for him.

Build the sentence in four parts, then stop talking.

Name the illness, if there was one. The Dougy Center is specific: if the person died of cancer or leukaemia, say so rather than saying he got really sick. A child who learns that getting sick is what kills people has a new fear waiting for the next cold in the house, including their own.

Tell them today, and tell them yourself. The same guidance recommends telling children as soon as possible, so they hear it from someone they trust rather than from another child, an overheard phone call or a screen.

Say less than you have prepared, then say what happens next. Give a short explanation and let their questions decide the rest. Then one line about the child's own day: who is collecting them, where they are sleeping tonight, who is looking after them. The first private question after a death is very often a practical one, and answering it unasked saves them having to ask.

What not to open with. Not an instruction about how to behave, such as asking a child to be brave or to be strong for their mother. Not a question ("do you know what has happened?"), which hands them the job of guessing. And not a promise that everything will be fine.

What to Say at Each Age: Explaining Death to a Child from Toddler to Teenager, with the Actual Words

The table rests on one framework. The paediatrician David J. Schonfeld, writing in the Journal of Pediatric Health Care in 1993, set out the four concepts a child has to reach before death means what it means to an adult. Irreversibility: death is permanent, and unlike the characters on screen who die and come back, nobody returns. Finality: every function of the body stops, so the person cannot see, hear, feel cold or feel pain. Inevitability: everything alive dies eventually. Causality: children have to be helped to the real cause, because the cause they invent is usually themselves.

A word about the bands. Every reputable source divides childhood differently, so the rows below are a synthesis built so that each band has words attached to it rather than a standard, and your child may belong in the row above or below their birthday. Child Bereavement UK, the Milan palliative care organisation VIDAS and the Italian service Unobravo all publish their own bands and are worth reading.

The caveat matters more than the table. Schonfeld writes that children reach these concepts on average between five and seven, that there is wide variability between children of the same age, and that children tend to regress under stress. A death in the family is invariably stressful, so, as he puts it, children are most apt to function as though they had a less developed understanding of death at exactly the moment they need a mature one.

Four questions that beat guessing from a birthday. Schonfeld gives four to put to the child, one per concept, to find out where this particular child actually is. Ask them in a quiet moment and listen rather than correcting on the spot:

1. When someone dies, can they come back to life again? (irreversibility)
2. What happens to people after they have died? Can they still see or hear or feel pain? (finality)
3. What causes people to die? (causality)
4. Who dies? Does everyone eventually die? (inevitability)

A six-year-old who says people die because they were naughty needs the causality conversation before anything else.

Four Complete Conversations, Word for Word: A Sudden Death to a Four-Year-Old, a Long Illness to a Seven-Year-Old, a Mother to a Ten-Year-Old, a Brother to a Teenager

A sudden death told to a four-year-old, a long illness to a seven-year-old, a mother's death to a ten-year-old, and a brother's death to a teenager. The children are invented, the lines they say are the ones children commonly do say, and every word of your half is meant to be changed into your own. Read whichever one you need aloud once first, so the words are in your mouth rather than on a screen.

1. A sudden death, to a four-year-old. Her grandfather died in the night.

You. Mia, come and sit with me. I have very sad news. Grandad died last night. His heart stopped working and the doctors could not make it start again. When a person dies, their body stops working completely and cannot start again. So Grandad will not come back, and we will not see him any more.

Mia. Can we go to his house tomorrow?

You. We can. Grandad will not be there, because he died. Grandma will be there, and she will be very sad, and she will be glad to see you.

Mia. Is Grandad cold?

You. No. When a person dies they cannot feel anything at all. They cannot feel cold and they cannot feel hurt.

Mia. Can I have my biscuit?

You. Yes. And you can ask me about Grandad whenever you want. Tonight I am putting you to bed, tomorrow I am taking you to nursery, and I am here all week.

It corrects the one thing she believes, which is that he is somewhere feeling cold, then answers the biscuit question without a flicker. Going back to a biscuit is not a sign she missed it. She will ask all of this again this week, and the answers should not change.

2. A long illness, to a seven-year-old. His grandmother had leukaemia for two years and he knew she was ill.

You. Ben, sit down with me a minute. I have sad news about Nana. Nana died this morning, at the hospital, with Grandpa and me there. The leukaemia had made her body too weak, and in the end her body stopped working.

Ben. But she had the medicine.

You. She did. It worked for a long time and gave us two more years with her, and then it stopped working. That is not because she did anything wrong, or because anyone did.

Ben. Is leukaemia catching? Could I get it?

You. No. Leukaemia is a cancer of the blood. You cannot catch it from anybody and nobody gave it to Nana. It is nothing like a cold, and nearly every illness you and I get, we get better from.

Ben. I didn't go and see her last time.

You. I know. That did not change anything about her illness, not one bit. She knew you loved her, and I told her every time. Lots of people wish they had gone once more. I wish that too.

It names the illness, separates it from every cold he will catch this winter, and takes the guilt he half confesses at the end without arguing him out of the feeling. He said the most important line last, which is normal.

3. A mother, to a ten-year-old. The sentence, the facts and the practical answers. Nothing here needs decorating.

You. Leo, I have to tell you something very sad and I am going to tell you straight away. Mum died this afternoon at the hospital. Her heart stopped, and the doctors worked on her for a long time, and they could not restart it.

Leo. No. She was fine on Tuesday.

You. She was. It happened very fast and nobody expected it, including the doctors. I will tell you anything you want to know, today or in a month, and if I do not know I will say I do not know.

Leo. Who is going to take me to school?

You. I am. On Monday and every day after that. Nothing about where you live or who looks after you is changing.

Leo. Do I have to tell everyone?

You. No. I am emailing your school tonight so you do not have to be the one who says it. You can tell whoever you want, when you want, and nobody at all if you would rather.

The fact first, then the two things a ten-year-old most often needs: the facts of the death, and the continuity of their own life. The question about telling everyone is the one adults forget, and taking that job off them is almost always right.

The same opening, when it is their father who died. The shape does not change and neither does the order. Only the cause and the name of the person move:

Leo, I have to tell you something very sad and I am going to tell you straight away. Dad died this afternoon at the hospital. He had a stroke this morning, which is a sudden injury inside the brain, and the doctors could not mend the damage. He did not wake up again and he was not in pain. I am taking you to school on Monday and every day after that, and nothing about where you live or who looks after you is changing.

4. A brother, to a teenager. Child Bereavement UK's guidance on the death of a sibling shapes this one: the same direct words, a particular guilt met before it is voiced, and a changed place in the family.

You. Ava, come and sit with me. Daniel died this morning. I am going to tell you exactly what happened, the same as I am telling the adults. He collapsed at football this morning. His heart stopped and the ambulance crew could not restart it. The doctors think there was something wrong with his heart that nobody knew about, and they will tell us more this week. That is everything I know right now. When I know more you will know more, the same day I do.

Ava. I was so horrible to him last week.

You. I want to say something about that before you carry it around. Nothing you said to him, and nothing you ever thought about him, had anything to do with him dying. Brothers and sisters say horrible things to each other. That is not what this was.

Ava. I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

You. There is nothing you are supposed to do and nothing you are supposed to feel. I am grieving him too, and you are not on your own in this house with it. People will say strange things to you this week, and some will ask whether you are an only child now. You never have to answer that.

It treats her as an adult about the facts, because Schonfeld warns that adults wrongly assume a teenager who can think rationally needs no further explanation. It raises the guilt rather than waiting for it, and Child Bereavement UK recommends saying out loud that you are grieving too, so she is not left comforting a parent who is pretending to be fine. The last line gives her permission to refuse the only-child question, which is one of the lonelier things a bereaved brother or sister is asked.

The Four Questions Children Ask, and Honest Answers: Is It My Fault, Will You Die Too, Where Is He Now, Can I Still Talk to Him

1. Is it my fault? Most children never ask this out loud. Schonfeld describes young children's grasp of cause as magical thinking, often reinforced by adults without their meaning to, and writes that children are apt to assume responsibility for a death by deciding that their bad thoughts or some unrelated action caused it. His advice is to assume the guilt is there even where the child could not possibly have had a part, and to raise it yourself. His suggested wording runs roughly like this:

A lot of the children I have met whose [grandmother] died have told me that somewhere inside they felt it might have been their fault, even when it obviously was not. We both know that thoughts and feelings cannot make a person die. I know there is nothing you did that caused Nana to die. But I wondered whether you have ever felt the way those other children did?

For a four-year-old, shorter: "Nothing you did, nothing you said and nothing you wished made this happen. It was her illness." If a child believes people die because they were naughty, that belief blames them for this death and tells them they are next, so correct it directly. Where a brother or sister has died, Child Bereavement UK names the same fear and the same answer: they need telling that they are not to blame.

2. Will you die too? The free Spanish manual Hablemos de duelo, written by the child and adolescent psychologist Patricia Diaz Seoane for the Fundacion Mario Losantos del Campo in Madrid, is the most useful thing published on this question. It warns that both short answers backfire. A flat yes gives a child something to dread tonight. A flat no is a lie they will later discover, which costs you the thing you most need, being believed. What it recommends is postponement: agreeing that it is true, and putting it a long way off. Its model answers, in English:

• "Yes, love, I am going to die, but not until a very, very, very long time from now."
• "I will die when you are very grown up and able to look after yourself."
• "Of course, love. But when I die you will be much older. You will have done all sorts of things, finished school, maybe had a family of your own, and you will be working."

Children raise the obvious objection, because one of them knows a child whose father died young. The manual answers that too: that is true, and usually people die after a very, very long time, or when they are very, very ill. Then add the practical half, which no reassurance replaces. Name the person who would look after them: "If anything ever did happen to me, Aunt Dawn would look after you, in this house, and she already knows that." A named adult settles more fear than any sentence about time.

3. Where is he now? The body is the half adults skip. Young children think concretely and take explanations at face value, Schonfeld writes, and his own example is children who were told the body is placed in a casket and then were frightened to go to the wake, wondering what had happened to the head. So describe it literally:

His whole body is in the coffin, lying down. On Friday the coffin will be buried in the cemetery, in the ground, or it will be taken to the crematorium, where great heat turns a body into ashes. He cannot feel any of it, because he died.

The other half is whatever your family believes. Schonfeld's line is that religious explanations can be shared with children but should not be relied on as the only explanation of death. His case for why is a child who was told that God loved the baby so much that he wanted him back as an angel at his side, and who was also told that church was God's home, and who then behaved badly in church so that God would see he was not angel material. So say your belief as a belief, in the words your household uses, after the facts rather than instead of them, and do not borrow a belief you do not hold because it sounds comforting. Two things stay true whatever your family believes: he will not come back, and we will not see him again. When you reach the end of what you know, the Sociedade Brasileira de Pediatria offers the best sentence available in its guidance on childhood grief: I do not know, let us find out together.

4. Can I still talk to him? Yes. In a great many households talking to the dead is not a misunderstanding to be corrected, it is what the family does: at the grave, at the home altar, in prayer, out loud in the car. None of that needs fixing, and a child told it is silly loses the person and the practice at once. What belongs beside it is the part that is true whatever your family believes, said in words a child can hold:

• "Yes. You can talk to him whenever you like, out loud or in your head, and you do not have to tell me about it."
• "He will not come back, and we will not see him again. Talking to him is still something people do all their lives."
• "If you want to say something to him and you would rather I was there, come and get me, at any time, including the middle of the night."

Then give them something to do with it. Say goodnight to the photograph. Keep a box in their room. Go to the grave if your family goes. Or let them write to him: our guide to writing a letter to someone who died is written for adults, and its gratitude prompt, the things you never got to thank them for, works for a child of eight with a little help.

Words to Avoid and What to Say Instead

This is not about delicacy, it is about literalism. A child of four hears what you said and not what you meant, so the phrase chosen to soften the blow is often the one that needs undoing six months later.

The rows come from different places, so here is who names which. Child Bereavement UK names lost, passed away, gone to the stars and gone to sleep, and says euphemisms can seem kinder while causing confusion. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, whose guide for families is published in Russian, Spanish and Chinese as well as English, names passed and went away. The Dougy Center names passed away, went to sleep, crossed over and lost in one line, and is the source for naming the illness. The watching-from-the-sky row carries a warning from Pro Palliativ, the educational project of the Vera hospice charity in Russia, which finds that the comforting image of a grandparent watching from above tends to produce anxiety rather than calm, and which names two local untruths to avoid: she is in hospital, and she has gone on a long journey. The last two rows are not from any of them.

Should the Child Come to the Funeral? A Decision Sheet

Two honest things first. Schonfeld says plainly that little research has been done on this and that his guidance is drawn from his own clinical experience. And Child Bereavement UK reports both halves from the children themselves: some who were not given the option told the charity they deeply resented not being included, even where the decision was made with the best of intentions, while children who were prepared and attended did not regret going. Neither source sets an age floor. Your own tradition or your own family may set one, and that is a different question from what the guidance says; what the guidance says is that the decision belongs to the child and the family rather than to a rule.

The preparation script. This is the part most adults leave out and the part that decides how the day goes. Say it at home, the day before, in your own detail. The script below describes a church service with a closed coffin a few days after the death. In Muslim and in Jewish practice the burial is usually within a day and there is normally no viewing, so there may be an hour rather than an evening to say this in. Keep the same order, in your own tradition and your own words, and say it in the car if that is the time you have.

On Friday we are having Nana's funeral. It is at the church on Mill Road and it lasts about half an hour. Nana's body will be at the front in a long wooden box called a coffin, with the lid closed. Her whole body is inside it, lying down. There will be about sixty people and a lot of them will be crying, including me and including Grandpa, and that is what a funeral is for. Someone will stand up and talk about Nana, and we will sing two songs. Afterwards everyone comes back to our house and there are sandwiches. Auntie Kay is sitting next to you, and if you want to go outside at any point you squeeze her hand and you go.

The line about her whole body being inside, lying down, is there for the reason Schonfeld gives: the children in his example were told the body goes in a casket and would not go, because they were wondering what had happened to the head.

Seeing the body is a different question. Child Bereavement UK treats viewing the body separately, and the conditions are stricter. The choice has to be genuine, the child needs to know nobody expects it of them, and they may change their mind at any point, including at the door. Whatever they might see or touch should be described beforehand: the room, who else will be there, what she is wearing, what she is covered with, and that she will feel cold and her skin will be very pale. If you cannot face being in the room yourself, find another trusted adult to go in with them rather than cancelling their chance to go.

If they do not come. Include them in the gathering afterwards. Let them draw a picture or write a card to be placed on the coffin. Find a private way at home to mark the hour. And remember what Child Bereavement UK says in its guidance on explaining a funeral: it is never too late to hold a memorial or another ceremony that includes the child saying goodbye.

The First Weeks: What Grief Looks Like at Each Age

The most useful thing to know about the first weeks is that a child who looks fine is not evidence of anything. Schonfeld writes that children grieve deeply and for long periods but may not give adults that impression, because they do not sustain strong emotions for long stretches. Grief arrives in bursts: twenty minutes of it, then football. The exchange he describes is the one to watch for in yourself. A surviving parent says the child is doing great while the parent is falling apart, and the conversation stops there. What the child is then left to carry alone is the frightening part: whether it was their fault, whether you are going to die next, and who would look after them if you did.

Tell the school, and agree one signal, by email before the child goes back, so that no teacher finds out in front of the class:

Dear Mr Adeyemi, I am writing to let you know that Leo's mother, Sarah, died on Thursday afternoon. Leo is ten and he knows all of the facts. He will be back in school on Monday. He would rather it was not announced to the class, and he is happy for you to tell the other teachers.

Could we agree one thing. If he needs to leave the room, he will put his pencil case on the desk and go to the library, without having to ask. Mrs Patel has said she is willing to be the person he goes to. His homework may be late for a while, and please tell me if you see anything that worries you, however small. Thank you, Paul Hart

The long view, which nobody warns you about. Schonfeld writes that children grieve in stages over many years and reprocess the death at each new stage of life, bringing new thinking and feeling to it to reach an explanation that satisfies them. So a child who accepted it at six asks the whole thing again at eleven, and again at sixteen with harder questions. That is not a relapse and not your explanation failing. It is the same child, with a bigger mind, asking properly.

The hardest days arrive on the calendar rather than at random. Our guide to the first Christmas without a loved one has a section written for children, and what to say on a death anniversary has the words for the day itself.

When a Pet Died First, and the Conversation That Comes With It

For a great many children the first death they meet is an animal's, and for a great many parents it is the first time they have to say the word out loud. Child Bereavement UK applies the identical rule to the death of a pet: use the words died and dead, rather than gone to sleep or lost. One claim this page will not make is that a pet's death prepares a child for a human one. No source we read says that. What is true is narrower: the words are the same, the questions are the same, and it is real practice for the adult.

The vet appointment is where the language goes wrong, because the standard English phrase for it is the exact phrase to avoid. Plan the sentence before you go:

The vet gave Rusty an injection of medicine. It did not hurt him. It stopped his heart, and then he died. He will not wake up, because dying is not the same as sleeping.

If the animal died at home or in the road, the same shape works: what happened, that his body stopped working, that it cannot start again, and that nothing the child did caused it. The guilt question arrives here too, because a child who left the gate open has already worked that out. The rest of the charity's guidance is the same as for a person in a smaller key: let them feel however they feel, be clear and honest, help them remember the animal in a particular way, and be patient with how long it takes.

When to Ask for Help, and Who to Ask

Two thresholds a parent can use, neither of which is a list to score your child against.

The first is about time and breadth. The Spanish manual quoted earlier gives the most practical version of it: watch what persists and what spreads. Not being able to pick up the thread of school work, or to rejoin friends and activities. Extreme swings of mood. Sadness that stops a child functioning. Taking on far too much responsibility. Recurring fears, or recurring thoughts about death. Guilt. Anything that keeps going over time, or reaches into many areas of their life, or holds up their development. One hard fortnight is not that. Four months of a shrinking life is.

The second is about behaviour rather than feelings. The Dougy Center's version is that most children and teenagers do return to how they were functioning before the death, that some are at risk of difficulties such as depression, anxiety or trouble at school, and that if you notice ongoing behaviours that interfere with a child's daily life you should seek the advice of a qualified mental health professional. Daily life is the test. Sad is not a symptom. The same guidance tells you what to ask whoever you find: their experience and training in grief and loss, their experience of working with children, and how they work.

Why a clinician looks sooner at a child than at an adult. The American Psychiatric Association summarises the criteria for prolonged grief disorder with different windows for the two: at least a year since the death for an adult, at least six months for a child or adolescent. The people who do this work start looking earlier at children, so it is a reason to ask sooner, not a box to tick.

One thing that is not a bullet point in a list. If a child of any age talks about wanting to die, about joining the person who died, or about ending their life, that is not an item to keep an eye on. Contact your child's doctor today, or your local emergency or crisis service if you are at all worried about their safety. Today, not after the funeral.

Three deaths this page deliberately does not script. A death by suicide, a violent death, and a death the child witnessed. Each changes what to say and in what order, the guidance differs from country to country, and in those three cases getting the words wrong does real harm. Child Bereavement UK keeps separate guidance for these deaths, and so do the services below. Use it rather than adapting anything here.

Your own support counts as the child's. The Dougy Center notes that research links how well a child does after a death to how well the adults around them are doing.

What Your Child Will Want at Eighteen, and What You Can Record This Week

The questions in this guide are the ones a child asks this week. At eighteen they ask different ones, of whoever is still there. What did she sound like. What did she think of me. The answers are in the house right now, in the heads of adults far too tired this month to be thinking about 2040. Three small things, none of which takes an evening:

1. Write down the conversation you have just had. What you said, what they asked, the words they used. In ten years nobody will remember them.
2. Record two minutes of your own voice. Not a speech: one ordinary story about the person who died, told the way you would tell it at the table. Our guide to recording your voice for your family covers the practical side, and if the only recording of the person who died is an old voicemail there is a deadline on it, so see how to save a voicemail before anyone closes the phone line.
3. Write one letter forward, to be read years from now, when the child is old enough to want the longer answer. Our milestone letters to your children and letters to open at 18 have examples to start from, and if the adult who is dying is the one who wants to write, letters after a terminal diagnosis is written for that.

Goodbye App is built for the third of those. One letter holds what you wrote and one recording of you saying it, so the story and the voice telling it travel together. The day and the hour it reaches them are yours to set, up to 30 years from now, which is the whole distance between a child of four and a woman of thirty-four, and it arrives as an email to the people you name. The letter is private until it is sent, it is free, and it works in 15 languages on the web and Android. If you switch on the optional inactivity release, letters go earlier should your account fall quiet for a period you set between 3 and 45 days.

None of which is the point of this page. Nothing recorded or scheduled replaces the conversation, and a letter for eighteen is no use to a child who was not told the truth at four. Say the sentence first. The rest can wait until the house is quiet.

Questions Parents Ask

How soon should I tell them? As soon as you can manage, and ideally today. Children find out anyway, from an overheard phone call, a cousin, a classmate, a screen. The one thing you can decide is whether they hear it from someone who loves them.

At what age does a child understand death? Schonfeld puts the average at between five and seven for the four concepts that make up an adult understanding, with wide variability between children of the same age, and he warns that children regress under stress, which a death in the family always is. So a seven-year-old may hear it like a four-year-old this week. The four questions in the age section above find out where your own child actually is, which beats guessing from a birthday.

How do I tell a child their father or grandfather died? The same four parts in the same order, with his name and his cause of death in them. The age table gives the sentence for each year, the first conversation is a grandfather told to a four-year-old, and the third has a father variant written out for a ten-year-old. Say the relationship the child uses for him, Dad or Grandad, not "your father".

Do I tell all the children at once? Usually together, so nobody carries a secret for an afternoon, and then a few minutes alone with each. The first sentence can be the same for everyone. The second one cannot be the same for a four-year-old and a twelve-year-old.

Is it all right to cry in front of them? Yes, and it helps. Name it so they are not guessing: "I am crying because I miss her very much. I will be all right in a few minutes." A child who watches an adult be sad and then pass the potatoes has learned something true about grief.

Do I have to tell them how the person died? Tell them the fact and the cause in plain words, including the name of an illness. Not every detail, and the test for each one is simple: does knowing it change what the child understands, or only how frightened they are?

I already said she had gone to sleep. Have I ruined it? No. Nothing is broken, and the repair is one sentence said today: "Yesterday I told you Grandad had gone to sleep. That was not the right way to tell you and I want to say it properly. Grandad died." Children take a correction from a trusted adult much better than a story that keeps not adding up.

He did not react at all. Should I worry? Almost certainly not. Leave the door open rather than asking how he is feeling six times a day: mention the person who died in ordinary conversation, keep bedtime long enough for a question, and answer whatever he brings whenever he brings it.

Should they go back to school straight away? Many children want the ordinary back quickly, and school is where most of it lives. Email the school first, agree one adult and one way of leaving the room, and let them go.

What if the adults in the family disagree about what to tell them? Agree one sentence before anyone speaks, even if it is a compromise. A child who hears two versions concludes that the truth is being managed and starts looking for it elsewhere.

How do I explain death to an autistic child, or a child who finds language hard? The same plain words, more literally, more often, and with more warning about anything that will change in the house. Drop every figure of speech, including the gentle ones. Say what will happen and in what order, and expect to say it again on the same words. The bereavement services listed above are the people to ask for guidance written for your own child.

What if I get it wrong? You will get some of it wrong, and it will matter far less than you fear. What children remember from this week is not the phrasing. It is that somebody told them the truth, stayed in the room while they took it in, and came back the next day to answer the same question again.

If you are reading this because you are thinking about ending your life, please talk to someone today. findahelpline.com lists free, confidential helplines in your country, and there is more on our suicide and self-harm page.