The air was thick and hot and slowly invading the inside of my throat as I stepped out of the car and into the scorching August sun. I treaded slowly behind my Dad as I entered through the white doors of gloom. With barely half my body through the doorway, the hair on my neck immediately raised and the skin on my body felt like it was about to crawl off and crumple onto the 70s-styled carpeting within an instant. Death was something I’d never encountered before – unless you count my distant second cousin’s uncle or great-great-grandmother. I was never naïve to the fact that we’d all leave this Earth one day. As a 14-year-old with hope this world would be kind rather than, at times, chew me up and spit me out, I never imagined I’d ever have to face death head-on while still being so young.
You hear horror stories of children losing their parents in car wrecks, or families being torn apart by the death of those they loved and cherished, but you never fully believe it will happen to you – until it does.
So, there I was back in that room. With nothing but a long, wooden box sitting right under my nose. My head slowly tilted down until I was directly hovering over my brother’s body. He looked almost peaceful. His skin porcelain-like as he was donned in a suit. I’d never seen him wear a suit before; he was more of a blue jeans and T-shirt kind of guy. It was hard to imagine that just two weeks prior, the brother that laid before me put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. How could this have happened? How could one of my favorite people in this world feel such a dreadful, agonizing pain that made death seem better than living?
In the two years following the loss of my brother, I experienced the most morbid, excruciating pain as I tried to deal with the heartbreak of losing a loved one. Suicide leaves you full of unanswered questions and open-ended thoughts that all follow the path into a deep, dark hole. Eventually, after those first few years, I started to try and find clarity in my own personal research on mental health. Despite being a slow, painful process, this started to help. While I’ll never fully understand the pain my brother was in, given I wasn’t living inside his head, it provided some comfort in understanding the true depths of mental illness.
According to the World Health Organization, close to 800,000 people die due to suicide every year, which is equivalent to one person dying every 40 seconds.
Forty seconds.
To put it in greater perspective, that’s one person taking their own life every other 20 words of this article I write. This statistic doesn’t even account for the millions of other people who’ve attempted suicide.
How is this possible?
And, an even better question, what can we do as a society to better help these people who are struggling?
The answer can be broken down into three parts:
Education: Becoming educated on basic mental health information is a key component in advocating for mental health. Schools must start implementing mental health education earlier into their core curriculum so that kids are better prepared at an early age on how to take care of their mental health. This education will also help pave the way for a more positive conversation on mental illness.
Implementation: Similar to education, schools, workplaces, universities, hospitals, and essentially any organization or business must work harder to implement and cultivate safe spaces of healing and conversation. Whether that be allowing students and workers to take mental health days – just like they would sick days – or by incorporating mental health activities into their daily schedules.
Advocacy: This step is crucial. Advocating for mental health and promoting a world free of a negative stigma will only help to prevent these high rates of suicide. Making resources more easily accessible to everyone is also a part of this step. By starting the conversation and normalizing discussions, we can make a difference.
According to an article from the National Council for Behavioral Health, 76% of Americans say people with serious mental health illness experience discrimination and have discomfort interacting with people with serious mental illness. In addition to this, the top barrier for accessing proper mental health care is cost; this is followed by insurance coverage issues and confusion over where to go for this type of care.
How can that be?
When someone suffers from cardiovascular issues, has cancer, or even has a broken leg, they know immediately where to get treated and if their insurance will cover it. Why can’t mental health be treated on this same spectrum? Our society gets so wrapped up in this conversation of physical versus mental that it sways us from the truth that mental health is still health, and it deserves to be treated as such.
Unless we’ve experienced suicidal ideation ourselves, we may never fully understand what truly goes on inside a person’s head when they make the decision to end their life. While this feels like a defeat, for we may never be able to bring the number of suicide deaths down to zero, we must remember millions of people around the world struggle with mental illness.
By beginning to incorporate the three steps mentioned into our daily lives, we can make a difference.
I will continue to advocate for mental health in honor of my amazing brother who unfortunately lost his battle to his mind’s inner demons. To all the sisters, brothers, mothers, husbands, and friends, and for the ones who feel as though their voices can’t be heard, let’s continue to educate, implement, and advocate. Together, we can make a difference.