Harming yourself is not the answer if you’re feeling down

Suicide. It’s a tough topic to think about, talk about and write about.

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

Several years ago, I bumped into an old friend that I had gotten to know through work.

We hadn’t seen each other in a while. We were both waiting to talk to the same person, and sat there and chatted for probably 20 – 30 minutes. He mainly talked about his wife and his teenage daughter, whom he adored.

There was no indication that anything was wrong with my friend. He seemed perfectly normal.

Finally, the person we were both waiting to talk to became available. Since what I needed to talk to them about wasn’t going to take long, I went first. Then I left so that my friend could talk to the person.

Less than 24 hours later, I remember Trent Knuckles walking into the office of the News Journal to inform us that the friend, who I had been talking to the day before, had killed themselves.

I was floored.

Shocked!

My friend had seemed fine just one day before.

When I think about it to this day, it still bothers me and probably always will.

Sometimes there are no warning signs that someone is going to kill themselves. Other times there are.

A few years after this incident, I was speaking with another friend, who no longer works around here. He had lost his wife a few months earlier. He confided in me that he had gotten low after her death and had thought about killing himself.

Before he left, I looked him directly in the eye and made him promise me that if he ever got that low again that he would call me before he did anything. He promised that he would.

He has since remarried and as far as I know is doing pretty good.

Another time, I was looking at a friend’s Facebook page and he was quitting several organizations that he was active in. He was also giving some personal items away.

Sometimes actions like this can be a sign that someone is thinking about killing themselves.

I sent him an e-mail just to make sure that he was OK. As it turned out, he was planning to go back to school and was just trying to simplify his life some. He thanked me for asking if he was OK though. He told me that I was the only one, who did.

If you have a friend, who is going through some stuff, whatever it may be, try to remember to check on them. How are they doing? How are they holding up? Listen to their answers.

In recent months, we have had two teenagers, who apparently killed themselves in Whitley County, and I am aware of a third, who reportedly did so in a surrounding county.

I don’t know the exact circumstances of these deaths.

What I do know is that one person killing themselves is too many, especially if it is a young person.

I am by no means an expert on suicide and neither is anyone else here at the News Journal, but we have reached out to a few experts, who hopefully can offer so more insight into the topic of suicide.

On our editorial page this week are two letters to the editor that the News Journal solicited from our local community mental health center, which is Cumberland River Behavioral Health.

One is about suicide prevention, which was written by Cecelia White, who is the victim’s services director/emergency services coordinator. She has a master’s degree in clinical psychology, is licensed to practice at the Ph.D. level, and has 25 years of experience. (In case anyone is wondering, she is my wife.)

The second letter to the editor is about bullying. It was written by Hilary Baker, a child trauma therapist and licensed profession clinical counselor.

What role, if any, bullying may have played in any of these recent deaths we don’t know. What we do know is that bullying often plays a big role in teenage suicide in general.

Also, on the front page of the News Journal this week is a story based upon an interview with Melissa Johnson Lawson. Her 16-year-old daughter, Bethany Hope Lawson, was one of three people to kill themselves within a 24-hour period in 2018. Since that time, Melissa has started Bethany’s Hope with the hope of raising awareness about suicide and hopefully preventing it.
It’s the hope of the News Journal that readers will find this information valuable and that more suicides can be prevented, especially by our young people.