Category: Suicide

CBS looking for parents of a preteen who died by suicide

It’s a macabre task. But if you’ve lost a pre teen to suicide or know of one who has, a CBS Evening News medical producer might want to talk to you. They are working with their chief medical correspondent, Dr. Jon LaPook, and are looking for:

  • A parent of a preteen (10-12) who died by suicide, who lives on the east coast, and willing to share their story with CBS News

This is in regards to a study about screening preteens for suicide risk in emergency room settings. The tool is 4-question ASQ Suicide Screening tool that is an evidence-based … Read more...

#MythBustingMondays -Suicide rates are highest at the holidays

Suicide rates are highest in the spring, lowest in the winter months

Most people think that there are more suicides around Thanksgiving and Christmas. The truth is that suicide rates are actually lowest in winter months and highest in the spring. October accounted for nearly twice as many suicide attempts as reported in July.

Experts aren’t entirely sure but there are theories.

In a lecture I saw at VCU Grand Rounds, the doctor said the theory was that people don’t have the energy to follow through in the winter.

“During the spring, some people become more physically active or agitated, … Read more...

Getting Comfortable with an Uncomfortable Conversation

Date: Thu, 03/21/2019
Time: 7:00pm-8:30pm
Cost: Free
Who can come: This is a Community event in Midlothian,VA. Mostly parents but teens are welcome. There will be emotional content.

Details on the event and takeaways on the registration page. And we are asking for registration so we can follow up with resources based on Q & A after. This is the neighborhood in which Charles grew up and the middle school he attended and the community is struggling with the loss of another young man.

Register here
What I miss most about Charles
… Read more...

Can a Blog Save Lives? TEDxGraceStreetWomen

inspirational tedx

Can we save people who are Googling, “ways to die?”

People Google how to do lots of things– including how to kill themselves. How can we leverage what we know about suicide and the internet to save lives? After my son Charles killed himself, I sold my digital marketing business, started this blog, Emotionally Naked, and used my skills at search engine optimization and content marketing to reach those most in need to help prevent suicide.

Doing this TEDx was a transformative experience

I made the intentional decision to focus solely on enjoying the moment. I didn’t and still … Read more...

Comment that make me laugh

So the quote below in response to a speaker job to which I applied and you are allowed to laugh. I did.

“Hi Anne, I hardly think that that a speech on mental health and suicide is appropriate for our Wine Tasting and Steak Dinner fundraiser.”

So yes, I brazenly submit my speaker topics to wine tasting functions. Why not? And she brazenly implied it was inappropriate in her response and I fell off the chair laughing. Charles would have made a hundred jokes about this.

It’s such a normal subject for me now. And obviously not the case with … Read more...

Living with unanswered questions

Charles left a lot of writing. He left a computer. He left a phone.

The writing was very revealing. Enough so, I wrote a book to include it.

The computer did not have much. But I was able to get into his facebook account and that answered some questions.

We never got into the phone. I held it in my hand after his death and that thin screen between me and my son’s last pictures and texts might has well have been a twelve inch steel door.

Every time I punched in a code I thought might be the one, … Read more...

‘I Don’t Understand.’My Journey Through Suicide Loss

by Chrissy Lowery

Jake Lowery
Jake Lowery, 07/16/1999- 06/15/2016

“Another one…?” I couldn’t help but hear it repeat in my head. “Really, another one?”

My body shook with chills and my stomach knotted itself, just as it does now remembering the story. I wondered if hearing these stories will always affect me this way, and if they would always jolt me back to that instant gut-wrenching fear that I felt on June 15, 2016.

I’m an RA for a freshman residence hall at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. We have weekly staff meetings in which my boss updates us on our duties … Read more...

Charles texted me this picture. My heart sprinted out of my chest

Charles texted the picture to me and also posted on twitter on March 2015

I was driving on March 2015, and Charles texted me this picture. I had to pull over. For some reason, this picture triggered an uneasy and uncomfortable feeling. Things were not going well with him and I think I must have sensed on some level his cavalier attitude about his own life.

He killed himself just three months later although by a different method.

He had been at a friend’s house when this was taken and the dad had told the guys they could have a … Read more...

Book Update

As many of you know and some of you might not know, I’ve written a book called Diary of a Broken Mind, a memoir about my son Charles who died by suicide that includes our story as well as his published and unpublished lyrics. So you get the point of view of what our family went through from more than one perspective.

It was tribe here who encouraged me to write it.

I don’t think I’m “important enough” to get an agent. I’ve been wondering if that is the case. I’m not famous, nor do I have a platform of … Read more...

Today is a Sunday. Life-ing is hard today.

by Anna Wieder

I choose the booth by the window because it seems like the first sunny day in forever.  I feel a surge of relief and a welcomed lift in sadness, as a I gaze out at the blue sky. 

In the background, I find the noise of many conversations comforting.  It keeps my feelings muted and calm. 

You see, this is a common Sunday spot, Panera. Part of my routine. With a book and a laptop and some work for the week.  I like how I can be alone, blend in, but still be surrounded by humans. I … Read more...

Cuddling up with my Charles memories

It still hits. Those grief lightning bolts of loss since Charles’ suicide. They are different 3.5 years later, however.

When it first happened, I could not escape those unrelenting waves of grief. I lost one third of my hair, screamed at the walls, blamed the carpet, broke out in hives, wrote two blogs a day to manage the hurt, and sank to the floor in sobbing wails of despair and loss.

The grief has softened into something like a vignette around a picture.

No longer do I run from my grief but towards it.

When it hits, I embrace it … Read more...

#MythBustingMondays – Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem

When you say this, vulnerable populations hear “permanent solution.”

Implying suicide is a cop out is a lazy and a flip comment from a limited point of view. We say it to try to make sense of something we don’t fully understand. It dismisses the fact that the thoughts, for many, can be pervasive. The intense, irrational part when someone is in danger of following through is temporary.

But when someone completes a suicide, we don’t always know how many times someone has suffered through it or what trauma, mental illness, or life event may have triggered it. Over time, … Read more...

What stops a person from killing himself?

My son, Charles, wrote this as part of his rap song, Hell on Earth.

Live with meaning before death forever
Eternal darkness,
peace at last,
no more hardships
Hard to comprehend in the human mind
Impossible to envision leaving yourself behind

Many people comment here about suicide and some while they are feeling the worst hurt of their lives and contemplating how to end their own life.

The two reasons people don’t kill themselves fall into two categories.

Life reasons.

Fear reasons.

The life reasons have to do with children, spouses, parents, pets, and friends. The suicidal person doesn’t want … Read more...

Does childhood trauma cause mental illness?

by Jody B.

A close friend asked the other day how I think my trauma has contributed to the variety of mental illnesses I live with which got me to thinking that not only did it contribute to mental health issues, but it started so young that it in fact changed my entire development and personality. I never had a chance to develop properly, especially on the emotional side, because for me, there simply was never a time I wasn’t traumatized.

My birth mother was a cigarette smoking, drug addicted alcoholic who gave birth to me, a drug addicted, drunken … Read more...

You know that family–the one that appears so happy

You know that family--the one that appears so happy

by Sonja Dawn
Nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors? That was my family.

We appeared to be a happy family, with loving parents and three happy, healthy daughters. I am the middle child and I appeared to be a typical middle child who felt ignored and left out, but really I just wanted to be left alone. The attention I received from my family was frightening no matter how hard I tried to change it.

I did want what any person wants, a loving family, but that is not what I got. I remember one particular day very … Read more...