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Opening up a dialogue on depression, suicide

October 2, 2009 12:36 am

BY AMY FLOWERS UMBLE

At 8, Carol Anne Brown knew what she wanted to be when she grew up: a saint.

Ten years later, her parents asked their priest if Carol Anne would go to hell. The 18-year-old had just killed herself.

For centuries, people didn't talk about suicide because it was thought to be a sin. And now, when most consider it the side effect of a serious mental illness such as depression, suicide still remains, largely, a word used in whispered conversations.

Some 30 million Americans have lost a friend or family member to suicide, said Reese Butler who runs a network of crisis centers.

Most never talk about it.

"It's like blindness in 1900, cancer in 1965, AIDS in 1984," Butler said. "There's a taboo about suicide."

He has tried to raise awareness since his wife killed herself 11 years ago. Monday night, he'll speak at Germanna Community College's Fredericksburg campus.

The panel will include five people who've been touched by suicide--a parent, a sibling, spouses and a friend of people who killed themselves.

The panelists will speak about depression and suicide in hopes of raising awareness and breaking the taboo.

"If I say to you, 'I have breast cancer,' then you say, 'Oh, my God, are you getting radiation? Are you getting chemo? Are you OK?'" said Mary Gilkey, Germanna's dean of nursing and health technologies. "But if I say to you, 'I have schizophrenia,' you immediately think of Virginia Tech."

Gilkey's sister killed herself, and her oldest daughter suffered from depression in her late teen years. The trained psychotherapist and dean of nursing compared mental illness to a roller coaster ride.

The person with a mental illness rides in the front, going up and down hills and twisting upside down.

"They may be in the front car of the roller coaster," Gilkey said. "But I tell you what: The family's in the car right behind them."

Todd Brown, Carol Anne's father, also compared his daughter's bipolar disorder to a roller coaster ride, with dramatic highs and lows.

He will be on the panel with Gilkey. Since his daughter committed suicide in April, he has given many talks on mental illness and bipolar disorder, in particular.

"I'm not here to shock people," he said. "I'm here to get the point across of how serious this is."

Mary Jane O'Neill, who will talk about her husband's struggle with depression, said most people were surprised to know the prominent Fredericksburg developer had a mental illness.

"I think they were shocked that such a successful business person could have this," O'Neill said.

After her husband, Bob, killed himself two years ago, many people admitted to his wife that they, too, suffered from depression.

"It was like some hush-hush thing," O'Neill said.

But talking about suicide breaks down myths, Butler said. The most prevalent is the idea that suicide is inevitable in severely depressed people.

In fact, Butler said, suicide is the most preventable form of death in America. Once people know they have a responsibility to help, they will start looking for warning signs, he said.

It is a lesson that's better to learn beforehand, said Butler who still feels he could have stopped the suicide of his wife, Kristin.

"The guilt never goes away," Butler said. "But it's therapy for me to help other people. It's therapy for me to prevent other people from committing suicide."

Brown agreed. He said that while others might shy away from the topic, he finds solace in talking about Carol Anne and reaching out to others in the same situation.

"I cannot bring my daughter back, as much as I would love to at times, to hold her again, to squeeze her. As much as I would love to do that, I can't," Brown said. "But I can do what Carol Anne would have wanted me to do, which is to understand her illness and to help the people who have it."

Amy Flowers Umble: 540/735-1973
Email: aumble@freelancestar.com