Dona J. Wishart: In the midst of community, suicide happens

My dear readers, today I bring a most difficult topic to this column. One we wish we didn't have to think about: suicide. But we must think about it, raise awareness, and at least try to find some interventions that may lead to solutions. Why? Because, every life has value!

As always, it is my hope to share valuable information. For this purpose I turn to a friend and colleague, Karen Ackerman, who has agreed to share her writing on the topic of suicide with you, within this column space:

I watched a young woman crying. I did nothing to help her.

My dogs, Golly and Hamish, and I were walking in the Burlington Northern Park, a postage-stamp park glued to the corner of the postcard, Wadena, Minn.Jefferson Street - Rural America Main Street - ran behind us. On our right the railroad tracks formed an iron hem. The bandstand, a small Victorian octagon, kept company with the old brick train depot. The two structures set up a humming between my ears of gentler times - "Seventy-Six Trombones," "Til There Was You." Yet on the railing of the bandstand sat a teenage girl, a portrait of loneliness, sorrow, alienation, rupture, revolt.

I turned away, assuming she required privacy. Stumbling upon her pain did not give me the right to meddle.

As I walked away, I sensed a train approach. Long before I spotted the engine, the ground began to shake. I felt it in my teeth. As it came closer, the sound hammered against my chest, making breathing difficult. My dogs pressed against my knees. Standing only a few yards from this colossus, exposed to such power, our bodies were suddenly and conspicuously tiny and frail.

A little over a year after my visit to Wadena, another young woman and her dog met a train.

Twincities.com (Pioneer Press) - WADENA, Minn. - The Wadena County sheriff's office has released the name of the girl killed after she was hit by a BNSF Railway train Saturday evening. Officials say 15-year-old Stacy Hundeby of Wadena was struck and killed by an eastbound BNSF train. Hundeby's dog was also killed by the train. Hundeby was a ninth-grader at Wadena-Deer Creek High School ?

Here, in the U.S., suicide is the third leading cause of death among persons aged 10-14, the second among persons aged 15-34 years, the fourth among persons aged 35-44 years, the fifth among persons aged 45-54 years, the eighth among person 55-64 years, and the 17th among persons 65 years and older.

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States.

I imagine Stacy, curled into a question mark, perhaps sobbing as did the teenager I watched beside those tracks a year earlier. I imagine Stacy hugging her dog, Bronson, pressing her face into his fur, telling him, as she had many times before, of her unbearable pain. I imagine she felt the ground tremble, as I had. At that point, my imagination chokes. At that point, Stacy and Bronson stepped in front of the train.

According to the experts:

? Suicidal acts are often impulsive. Even if one has considered suicide for many years, the act itself is usually carried out within five minutes of the decision, without forethought or consideration of the repercussions.

? Suicidal people are adept at faking, outwitting, hiding, masking, manipulating. Thoughts of self-murder are, most often, a private conundrum.

? The mental realm of a suicidal person is narrow, fixed, with spare or nonexistent options, without any concept of a future separate from the present which is a torment, "airless and without exit." They cannot visualize alternatives.

? Most acts of suicide - not all - can be prevented.

? Suicide is the second leading cause of death for people ages 15 to 24. The suicide rate among young adults has tripled since the 1950s.

? Most people between the ages of 13 and 18 have not yet reached the age of onset for manic-depression (age 18), drug and alcohol abuse (age 21), schizophrenia (age 21), or major depression (age 26), all foremost contributors to suicide. So the torment they feel as high school students can be expected to become worse.

? Today 12 people, aged 15-24, will commit suicide in the U.S.

? One person somewhere in the world will die by suicide every 40 seconds.

Efforts to stem the rise of suicide often include workshops for teachers so that they might recognize at-risk students or seminars/assemblies for students on the topics of mental health and suicide prevention. Even persons checked into the hospital for psychiatric disorders are released far too quickly. These efforts, falling far behind the need, are at best useless; at worst an advertisement for "How to End It All." Consider that every two hours, some potentially great teacher, athlete, musician, parent, scientist, author, actor, mathematician - some free-thinking and far-reaching human being which our sad world sorely needs - will commit suicide. Consider that every 40 seconds a human being of incalculable value is lost.

I began seriously connecting BeBloomin and the problem of suicide only months ago, when I read about Canada's First Nations' ongoing suicide epidemic. Then, in May, two of BeBloomin's communities (Wadena, Minn., and Gaylord) lost three young lives to suicide. I know that neither suicide prevention nor mental illness is within the domain of BeBloomin - far from it. However, BeBloomin may offer a unique platform for a safe and long-term connection between people in need of support, education and comfort. Not a two-hour seminar or a weekend retreat, but a venue in which to build a kinship.

I had thought Harvard had a group for just about everything, I mean there couldn't be a Free Thought Society, a Texas Club, and an Anime Society and not one addressing an issue as basic as mental health. But I was wrong. The only thing I found was the stigma that mental illnesses have in society was just as prevalent and pervasive here at Harvard. ("Night Falls Fast" by Kay Redfield Jameson)

I'm not poking at Harvard because it's the only university to have failed its students. This is still the situation in nearly every school in this country. Imagine a school without an LGBTQ organization. When I was young, this issue was thoroughly and conveniently (for many) ignored. Today, any school without such a support group is almost unheard of. Can we see a similarity between being alone and afraid as a gay man and being alone and afraid as one suffering from manic-depression? Can we know, perhaps even experience, places within our society that refuse to admit that transgender people exist and matter, places where even women with short hair are being harassed in public, and not believe that a stigma haunts anyone admitting to a mental illness? But today, members of the LGBTQ community and their friends can find each other. Still "more than half of those who meet the diagnostic criteria for mood disorders never seek or receive psychiatric treatment." Many hide their pain from friends and family. Mental illness is best kept under the hat.

Call BeBloomin a virtual living room, a closet, a cave, a ballroom. Let those who are fearful or cynical or hopeless call it whatever feels safe. BeBloomin is a place where coming together is easy, non-confrontational. No oval table or circle of chairs. No physical opposition to fellow members. Only a space defined as each person's comfort dictates. I am suggesting the formation of clubs or societies, as the young woman sought at Harvard and eventually developed herself. I am suggesting students form organizations much like those fashioned to support the LGBTQ community, with meetings and activities. I suggest this be a group of people wishing to come together because they care and accept that depression, manic-depression, schizophrenia and mood disorders are a part of life. At some point these wrenchingly painful illnesses will blast a hole in everyone's sphere of experience, if it hasn't already. Suicide will threaten us all.

The members might meet once a month, via BeBloomin, with a fully qualified psychologist or therapist. Members could attend from home, alone in their bedrooms, in their favorite classroom with two or three friends and their teacher, or in the coffee shop with a quorum of compatriots they've known since grade school.

The members might engage in activities designed to build confidence within the member group, raise funds for specific programming, or educate the broader community. Communicating the realities of mental illness to a wide audience and undermining the prejudices held against those who suffer would benefit everyone beyond measure. To these efforts, BeBloomin may be able to offer a forum in which the products of the group's activities are displayed.

Examples of activities:

? Arts - many who suffer mental illness are highly artistic. Graphic arts, photography, poetry, short story, short plays, musical compositions and performances

? TED Talks - those who present are passionately engaged in their topic. Students might discover their own passion by producing and presenting their own TED Talks. There are, also, a number of TED Talks dealing with suicide and mental illness which might be well-used as a resource for the society members.

? Technical Development - presenting the worthy works of one's friends to the wide world takes talent and huge amounts of time, but well worth every ounce of talent and tick of time.

? DoSomething.Org - choose an issue; work on a cause, anytime, anywhere, together or as a solo act.

? Oh-So-Many-Ideas - use the wits and witnesses within your community to find ways to keep us all suicide safe.

For more information on BeBloomin and/or to share your "Oh-So-Many-Ideas" to keep our community suicide safe, please contact Dona Wishart at the Otsego County Commission on Aging, (989) 748-4060, or Keith Moore at the Otsego County United Way, (989) 732-8929.