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09/21/2016 07:00 AMIf you met Leah Nelson when she was in school you would have said, ‘There goes a girl who has it all. Good grades. Extracurricular activities. Friends.’ You’d see a smiling face, and a young woman who seemingly had her life together.
And so it came as a shock to her friends and family when she tried to commit suicide.
“Even at the time I was a very high functioning person. We very much have this picture of the kind of person who tries to commit suicide,” she says.
She didn’t fit that picture. Still, she suffered from anxiety, and depression, and got to the point where she believed the only way to end the pain was to take her own life.
“These problems do not discriminate, and we so often hear these stories of young people who have died by suicide, and they seemed to have it all together,” she says.
Nelson will be one of several speakers at an upcoming meeting on the Madison Town Green on Saturday, Oct. 1 from 10 a.m. to noon, open to anyone from any town to attend. She and the other speakers, including a mother who lost her son to suicide in 2011, say their goal is to help normalize the process of talking about suicide, and of seeking help for mental health issues that can contribute to suicide.
Shining a Light
“Hopefully we will be able to shine a light on this. It something that affects us all,” she says. “If we start talking about these things, and normalizing these conversations, maybe we can help people before they are in crisis,” Nelson says. “We need to have conversations on a regular basis. We need to normalize health seeking, and make it normal to ask for help.”
Angela Ahern, from Madison Youth & Family Services, who is helping to coordinate the event, said town officials decided to sponsor it after getting results back from a teen survey in town that showed an alarmingly high level of students had contemplated suicide. While the numbers if Madison were higher than expected, they were on par with numbers reported statewide, and nationally, Ahern said.
“The survey looks at a whole bunch of stuff, strengths and weaknesses. One of the data points that came out was that the number of students who had attempted suicide was high enough that suicide
prevention became part of our agency’s long range plan,” she says. “And it’s not just that. There were also reports of anxiety, depression, social pressures, and experimentation with substances that were alarming.”
Ann Irr Dagle, who will talk during the Oct. 1 Madison event about her son Brian, who committed suicide, agrees that having conversations about these issues is imperative.
“We need to start these conversations, and keep these conversations going, and talk about warning signs and risk factors. What I’ve learned in the past five years is just amazing. The word suicide was never in my vocabulary,” she says. “I basically will share Brian, and the signs that I missed as the mother of a teenage son. Looking back, I see the signs were pretty evident. But at the time I did not recognize them.”
The Boy Next Door
Brian T. Dagle, in many ways was the typical boy next door, she says.
“He was a happy kid. He was involved and had many friends and so many people loved him. He could speak with anybody. He loved little kids. He wanted to be a teacher and went to college in Vermont. It seemed like he transitioned seamlessly to college. He loved it. His teachers loved him. After he graduated from high school, he gave the cafeteria lady flowers, because they would always give him free food.”
Even though he often did seem like that happy kid, he did suffer from some episodes of depression in high school and college.
“But he was being treated and he always assured me he was OK,” she says. “He would tell me, ‘Mom, this is my safe place in Vermont at college, where I forget about my worries.’”
Ann Dagle says she wishes now she had pushed harder to get him into therapy, and that she had been more open with him about confronting his depression. “But on the outside it looked like he was doing great. He was doing well in school. He had plans to study abroad. He was active. I didn’t want to dig too deep. One thing I do tell people now, is that if you have any questions, or concerns, about a loved one, overreact now, and apologize later. Just overreact. Don’t take anything lightly. Take everything seriously. Be the worrisome mom, or the over-doting mom.”
Brian Dagle committed suicide when he was away at school, the place he considered his safe place.
“He was away at school, and he was expecting friends up for the weekend, and yeah. Yeah, it shocked everyone,” she says. “We are very grateful for his college community. They spoke openly about the fact that he died from suicide. They never hid the fact. And East Lyme, where I live, they allow us to speak openly, and publicly. In lots of towns like Madison and East Lyme, they say, it doesn’t happen in my town. I applaud any community that opens up and says, ‘Yes, it can happen in our town.’”
People who are concerned about suicide should address those concerns by getting educated, Dagle says.
“There are lots of great programs for the public to learn about risk signs, and warning signs, and how to approach somebody who you think might be at risk,” she says.
Several experts, including Dagle and Nelson, said a program called QPR, offered online and through trainers, through the QPR Institute, at www.qprinstitute.com, is a great place to start.
“It’s stands for Question, Persuade, Refer,” Dagle says. “It’s the mental health equivalent to CPR. It’s a very short two-hour certification. It helps you ask the right questions, and use the right verbiage and to know what to do.
It’s OK to Ask for Help
“If you need help, it’s OK to ask for help. If you know somebody who might need help, you really need to talk with them, you really need to listen to them,” she says. “Like I said, the word ‘suicide’ was never in my vocabulary. I just left from talking with a woman who lost her husband. And never in a million years did she imagine she’d be sitting with me talking about this. It can happen to anyone and the loss is traumatic.”
Because it’s an issue that affects all communities, Ahern says, people from all towns can attend.
“We’re co-sponsoring it and using out town green. We want it to be right outside, we want it to be a commons event,” she says.
In addition to Dagle and Nelson, there will be a speaker who focuses on statistics, and trends, and prevention techniques. While tackling the subject of suicide can be daunting, Ahern said the goal is, ultimately, to focus on a message of hope, that there are resources available to help those in need.
“We’ll have information booths, therapy dogs, and lots of literature to hand out,” she says. “And we’ll have these Mardi Gras-like beads. Different colors will stand for the different relationships that people have with suicide.”
White is for the loss of a child, red for the loss of a spouse or partner, gold for the loss of a parent, orange for the loss of a sibling, purple for the loss of a relative or friend, silver for the loss of a first responder or member of the military, green for someone who is struggling with thoughts of suicide or who has made an attempt, and blue for someone who is supporting suicide prevention. Teal is for friends and family members of someone who is struggling.
“These beads are for people who want to share their experiences in a non-verbal way. There will be posters explaining it, like ‘What’s your color?’” she says. “Each color shows our personal connection to suicide. And there will be lots of clinicians available, so people who are wearing green can let us know they are struggling without using words. There’s a color for everyone, so everyone can feel connected.”
Other resources will include information and handouts about
• The National Suicide Prevention Life Line, 1-800-273-TALK (8255). In Spanish, 1-888-628-9454. In addition to small, wallet-sized flyers, there will be guitar picks, wristbands, and other handouts.
• The My3 app, available for Apple and Android phones, allows people who feel like they might be depressed, or at risk, to identify three people and input contact information for those people into the app. That way the numbers are readily available, along with the national suicide prevention hotline. There is also a safety plan that is a “written list of coping strategies and sources of support for people who are at high risk for suicide.” More information about the app can be found atwww.my3app.org.
• The Trevor Project, which is a national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) young people ages 13-24, www.thetrevorproject.org.
It’s going to be a fabulous opportunity to get the conversation going,” Ahern says. “Talk saves lives.”
Additional Resources:
The National Suicide Prevention Hotline
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255), and in Spanish, 1-888-628-9454. The Lifeline is free, confidential, and always available. Help a loved one, a friend, or yourself deal with trauma. Community crisis centers answer Lifeline calls.
See our story that list more resources: www.zip06.com/living/20160921/suicide-prevention-resources