Conference seeks to aid those who've lost loved ones to suicide, prevent more losses

Sept. 11--JEFFERSON COUNTY -- Kevin Hines was 19 when he tried to end his life by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Few survive the 220-foot drop, equal to about a 25-story building. He did.

Hospitalized afterward for more than a month with a broken back, he couldn't talk about what led him to the bridge and made him want to die.

"I didn't want to tell anyone what I did," he said recently from his home in San Francisco. "I didn't want my friends and family to know what happened because I was so embarrassed."

That was nearly 14 years ago, and Hines now has a decidedly different approach to telling his story. He tours the country and the world speaking about his experience with depression and suicide and will be at Mercy Hospital Jefferson on Friday speaking at its yearly suicide-prevention conference.

He wants to help those who have lost loved ones to suicide cope, and to stop others from doing what he did.

It's a message that Marilyn Presti of St. Louis wants to hear and learn from.

Her son, Danny Varga, took his life more than three years ago. He was 33 -- the same age Hines is now.

She is active in suicide-prevention causes, including the nonprofit CHADS Coalition: Communities Healing Adolescent Depression and Suicide, founded by the parents of Chad McCord, who killed himself a month before graduating from Oakville High School.

She has attended the conference every year. This year is the fourth conference.

"It helped to be with other parents and health professionals," she said. "It helps to hear both sides of the story."

Like Hines, her son battled depression his whole life. The first time he tried to kill himself, it was with a handful of pills. He was in the fifth grade. He started using drugs a few years later.

He was expelled from high school for marijuana possession, but later earned his GED. He got a good job as a plumber and had two children.

But he wrote in his suicide note that he couldn't get past his demons.

"I'm a very open person and I never lied about what he did," Presti said. She said talking about it has helped her heal, and she wants the same thing for others.

She also knows there's a stigma around suicide and depression and urges that alcohol and drug abuse be treated as diseases rather than bad choices.

Last year in Jefferson County, 36 people committed suicide. Through June of this year, the most recent data available, that number was already up to 23.

The majority of the deaths came from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, and most were by men.

Erin Poniewaz, a behavioral health services treatment supervisor at Mercy Hospital Jefferson, spearheaded the effort to start the suicide-prevention conference four years ago after seeing not enough was being done to help those who lost loved ones to suicide, and in prevention efforts.

Her brother committed suicide almost 10 years ago. He was 20 years old. The conference is a way to honor him and to try to make sense of his loss while helping others.

And today, she's seeing more lethal attempts by people in crisis.

She works to make sure the "human element" is part of the conference and that people have a place to share their stories, such as through a remembrance wall.

"When we get people talking about it, we decrease the stigma of it," Poniewaz said.

Those who attend are a mix of those who've lost loved ones, mental-health professionals and police. All of the 200 spots have been claimed, and there is a waiting list.

"Suicide doesn't discriminate, so we try to reach out to as many audiences as we can," Poniewaz said.

Theresa Keown, director of the master's of science of clinical counseling program at Central Methodist University, has attended every conference and she'll be there this year too.

"I don't think I know many people who haven't had a suicide touch them in some way," she said.

That includes herself. In recent years, she has lost friends to suicide.

She said it's key that mental-health professionals, and others, learn to ask the difficult question of whether a person is thinking of suicide. She praised conference organizers for involving so many groups in the conference.

"When those questions aren't asked, we lose people," she said.

She said it provides something for those who've lost someone that isn't found elsewhere in many places.

"It's a place where people can meet each other and say, 'I get where you're coming from,'" Keown said.

That can be hard to find, said Hines, who still hears voices and experiences hallucinations.

"The majority of my existence is within the realm of extreme paranoia," he said.

Sometimes it's that someone in the back of the room is going to shoot him, or fear of being struck by a car. A common fear he lives with is that a mailman is following him, trying to kill him, or that groups of people are talking in code about how to ruin his life.

Hines battles his mental illness every day, through everything from exercise regimens to medication, but he can't shake the suicidal thoughts that plague him from time to time.

When that happens, he knows to reach out for help, whether from his wife, other family and friends or by going to the nearest psychiatric ward.

"I'm not going to become a statistic," Hines said. "There's no way, no how, but that's not saying the thoughts don't occur. Because they do."

Leah Thorsen covers Jefferson and south St. Louis counties. Follow her on Twitter.

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