Talking about mental health saves lives

During World War II, a famous poster admonished people to shut up.

“Loose Lips Sink Ships” went the grim reminder, reinforced by the image of a torpedoed freighter’s stern slipping below the waves. The message was clear: Conversations can kill.

That made a lot of sense when faced with Nazi U-boats lurking off our coast. But in the fight against suicide, the Jana Marie Foundation and other mental health advocates take the opposite view.

For them, silence is deadly.

They’re urging people to speak up about mental health, to tell about their own struggles with depression, anxiety or illness, or experiences coping with the suicide of a loved one. Throughout September, National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, they’re striving to break down isolation and build affirming connections.

Toward this goal, the Jana Marie Foundation and other sponsors recently brought survivors and supporters together at the Millbrook Marsh Nature Center for the fourth annual Centre County Suicide Prevention and Awareness Day remembrance.

The point was to share, to teach and to learn, and five speakers representing hope, strength, recovery, voice and peace highlighted the program held in the center’s barn and community space. My 14-year-old son was among the speakers, and talked about coping with generalized anxiety disorder.

From a rustic stage, foundation Vice President Al Vicere welcomed the audience. After he lost his daughter, Jana Marie Vicere, to suicide in 2011, his family started the foundation and its work promoting mental health wellness and support.

One of its efforts, the Stompers Project, has created life-size statues from recycled sneakers and placed them in schools and elsewhere locally to raise awareness and help “stomp” out the stigma of mental health illness.

In his program opening remarks, Vicere recalled receiving a valuable lesson while mourning. When he talked about Jana Marie and her life, listeners would later offer their accounts of mental illness and suicide.

“What I realized was that for all these people, the fact that I was willing to share my story, and be open to sharing that story, gave them the feeling that I would be willing to listen to their story, and therefore coming up to me was almost cathartic for them,” Vicere said, noting the feeling came to be mutual. “It was OK to talk about it.”

He wasn’t alone. They weren’t alone. Somebody else knew about the pain, grief, confusion and guilt. They weren’t trapped in a silo, but rather living within a wide circle of friends.

Among Americans, suicide is the 11th leading cause of death, more than homicide — about 30,000 lives a year, including an average of 15 in Centre County. Depression and mental illness cut across cultural, ethnic or socio-economic boundaries, sadly linking us through common sorrow and pain.

To illustrate that universality, Vicere asked audience members who had experienced suicide in their life or had suicidal thoughts in any way to stand. He then made the same request to anyone who had suffered from a mental health problem or knew somebody who had. By the end, everybody had risen.

The exercise, he said, pointed out the “NKM2” phenomenon — short for No Kidding, Me Too — that usually occurs during mental health discussions.

“Because we all have a story,” he said.

Those stories can inspire strength and hope, as the foundation emphasizes and the program speakers aimed to achieve.

One recalled losing two close friends, one to cancer, the other to suicide, and coming to terms with the void in his life.

Another spoke of spiritual searching after her son killed himself, and finding some solace one day from deciding his spirit lived in a hawk that followed her on a walk.

A college astrophysics student described her schizophrenia as having nightmares while still awake, but noted it doesn’t keep her from a fulfilling life.

My son and another high school student spoke from the heart about finding inner peace and their desire to help others do the same.

All of them showed incredible courage.

It takes guts to bare yourself to an audience. I was moved by their bravery — and wiser for it. From hearing their perspectives, I left better able to meet the challenge set by an advocate during the program: to be another light chasing away the darkness around mental health, to be another puff of wind clearing the air.

Kudos to the foundation, other mental health advocates and support agencies for tirelessly working to foster the conversations and sponsor the events we need to bring mental health issues out in the open. We’re fortunate to have those dedicated souls, as well as sympathetic local government officials, but we’ll all have to play a part in progressing toward a brighter future.

“If we continue to work as a community, what we’ll find is that the issues that we’ve tried to bury as a society in the shadows for a very long time — and that’s the issues around mental health — the more we talk about it, the more we engage in these types of discussions, the more they come to the forefront,” Al Vicere said. “The more they come to forefront, the better able we’re going to be to deal with those issues.”

In a different time and battle, talking cost lives.

Today, it could save them.

This story was originally published September 17, 2016 at 7:40 PM with the headline "Talking about mental health saves lives."