*Trigger Warning: Mentions of suicide and related experiences*
September is Suicide Prevention and Awareness month, and as the month draws to a close I feel the urge to share my experience and keep the dialogue open past one single month of the year. While I’ve seen a number of people posting about mental health on social media over the past few weeks, the stigma around mental illness still hinders a lot of conversations from happening in person that could potentially save a life. Many of the posts I’ve seen just scratch the surface of the conversations that need to be happening as suicide reaches epidemic levels in America. Of course, any effort to openly talk about mental health helps with the destigmatization of those important conversations. But, with around 1.4 million people attempting suicide each year in America alone, this is more than just posting “check on your friends”. It’s about taking conscious action towards creating a culture where we can talk about our mental health as freely as we do anything else.
While very simple, one of the most effective ways to take action to achieve this goal is to be vulnerable and honest with your friends or family and share your experiences with mental illness. This creates a space where your friends know you can relate to whatever they may be going through on some level and feel comfortable reaching out for support if they need it one day. Starting conversations like this can be daunting, especially if your experiences are tied to trauma, but any small discussions about mental health that are comfortable with you can work to the same effect.
I cannot authentically speak on what it is like to be suicidal, but I can express what it felt like to be left behind. When I was fourteen, I lost someone I loved very much to suicide. I had had very few conversations about mental illness at that point in my life, so I experienced a lot of confusion and anger. I felt immense guilt and an unshakeable feeling that I was somehow responsible even though I knew it was irrational. A few months after my family and I suffered this loss, we moved to Canada for my mom’s job. It was there as I started high school that I felt just how powerful the stigma around mental health can be. In the wake of this unexpected loss, I experienced feelings of depression, intense paranoia, and irrational thoughts about losing other people in my life. I had a subconscious understanding that what I was going through was not something I should bring up with the new friends I was making, and I avoided bringing up the topic at home as much as possible, not wanting to reopen the wound with my family.
Being vulnerable about one’s emotions in general can be really challenging, so being the first to start an honest conversation about mental health with all of its surrounding stigma takes courage. I did not muster up that courage for most of high school as I felt that I was alone in my experience when really, that was far from the truth.
Upon starting college last year, I decided that I wanted to be the kind of friend that people could come and talk to about how they were really feeling with confidence that they would never be judged. As I mentioned, real suicide prevention and destigmatization of mental illness requires conscious action towards creating an environment where we can talk about our mental health freely. That required a bit of work on my end, but I often thought about the kind of things I needed to hear in my low moments. I decided that I would push through the discomfort and share my experience of mental illness and loss with my friends early on in our relationships, and many of us ended up having shared experiences. I think anyone who opens that same kind of dialogue with friends or family will find that everyone has some relation to or experience with mental illness.
In no way do I intend to oversimplify the issue of suicide prevention to simply speaking about trauma with close friends. But I do believe that it is the most accessible course of action that someone can take if they want to directly contribute to the destigmatization of mental health issues and consequently the de-escalation of the suicide epidemic that is currently worsening in the U.S.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
800-273-8255
VT Suicide Prevention Center
VT Crisis Text Line: Text “VT” to 741741
Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255