I don't know if any T I've ever worked with faced this problem, I didn't ask. I do know a friend who was a T, who was working with a high school student, who committed S. She had a very hard time following the young man's death. She questioned everything she did professionally after this happened; she ended up changing careers about two years later and although she never said this career change was due to what happened, I think it did have some impact on her decision. I'm not saying that she complained or whined about what happened to everyone who interacted with her, on the contrary, she rarely talked about the incident, but I and a few other friends knew that it shook her to her core.

I do think that people have varying degrees of empathy or understanding for incidents such as this. Personally, I think that teachers, doctors, massage therapists, hairdressers, neighbors, family members etc. can all have different levels of response to the S of someone that they know or care about. Some will react with a deep personal level of understanding/horror/regret/sadness whatever. Some will feel a fleeting degree of emotion and move on, seeing it as a personal choice of someone who was suffering and decided on a course of action that differed from what he/she might decide (and of course there are some who will brush it off as cowardly or a moral failing--not my choice and difficult for me to understand) But in any case, the way a person react is individual and personal. I don't think that any one group can claim a lesser or greater degree of pain or regret. I think each of us react individually and at a level we, personally feel connected to the individual and no one else can tell us what we feel is wrong or out of proportion.

I do feel, however, that in our litigious society, many professionals feel a gut wrenching fear when someone they are working with commits S (whether that be the general practitioner who has a patient who comes into the office complaining of being depressed or a T who is actively working with a client contemplating or expressing S ideation). No person wants to face the possibility that they might lose their license to practice and earn a living.