We all had.Īfter her death, her parents allowed me to read her journal, which highlighted the terrifying hallucinations that plagued her, devouring her at night when everyone else was safely in bed.
One night, she swallowed her stockpile of meds and died a few hours later. Someone consumed by a severe mental health illness is not able to make a reservation, pack a suitcase, go to the airport and get on a plane.ĭeaths of despair: My sister doesn't have COVID-19, but I'm scared she won't make it out of 2020 I even sent her an airplane ticket, to be used any time, to visit me. For what turned out to be her final months, I spoke with her every day, thinking that my attentions would help safeguard her. She spent her last year in and out of the psychiatric ward at a major medical center, where she had the best of care. Mental health crisis: New 988 suicide hotline can be our fresh start.įive years later, my friend was suffering from hallucinations and most likely bipolar disorder. Her condition turned out to be much more serious than that still it was the openness about our mutual maladies that brought us together.
We had met at the University of California, Berkeley, when I was in the throes of depression and she had suffered what she understood to be a concussion. I, once, had to learn the limits of “being there” in the hardest way imaginable many years ago when I lost a friend to suicide. The Raskins said their son had been “ enveloped in the love not only of his bedazzled and starstruck parents but of his remarkable and adoring sisters.”Īlas, not even that was enough to prevent his death. It’s not that Tommy was alone - he had an army of family and friends who loved him dearly. One posted that she wished she could have been there for him, as if she had a superpower that might have saved him. Indeed, depression turns us into secretive people who conceal their pain - and their risk. As one blogger wrote a few years ago for a mental health campaign, “People suffering from mental health problems (pull) a shroud of secrecy over their lives in the hope that people don’t find out how they’re really feeling.” My bipolar friend who died by suicide did not.Īs much as I was pained by Tommy’s death, I also found myself vexed as I read comments on his public Facebook page, because some posts highlighted wrong notions about depression and suicide. An invisible burden: I have a disability everyone can see.
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