Health

The power to prevent suicide

Bob CollinsBob Collins Aug 24, 2015
6

Officials have not yet been able to find the body of a 17-year-old girl, who jumped from St. Paul’s High Bridge into the Mississippi River after texting “goodbye” to a friend on Thursday. (Update 1:21 p.m.: A body has been recovered, the Pioneer Press reports)

Seventeen years old.

Yesterday, some of the Highland Park High School friends did what too many friends do around here too often. They gathered at the spot of her suicide, tying ribbons to the bridge railing, leaving notes and cards, expressing hope that other people won’t jump too, the Pioneer Press reports.

It’s about all they can do. That and think of ways to remind people there are reasons not to jump, a difficult task since we often don’t know exactly what draws a person to a bridge railing.

Dana Bogema, of St. Paul, started an online petition that asks for the state to permanently add a suicide hotline number on the bridge along with inspirational quotes of hope, KSTP says.

“I know it sounds corny, but sometimes people have to be reminded of the things there are to live for,” Bogema said.

On Saturday, people gathered in Wyoming, Minn., to do what they could to save some lives — they walked.

John Moe, to the left of the Storm Trooper, was the featured speaker. Moe’s brother, Rick, took his own life in 2007.

The participants walked and raised money for Stomp Out Suicide, which hopes to use the money to a suicide prevention effort in area schools. It would provide school counselors, social workers, and staff with the means to identify and help struggling students.

The organizers of similar walks around the country this week had a difficult task — make a fun event out of a suicide prevention effort.

You do what you can.

Heather Bone, for example, is riding a bike across country. The 21-year old Utah resident is making a video along the way, talking to people about what they love most about their lives.

“One 11-year-old boy said he lives for food and money,” she said. “One person told me they lived for another day. I’ve heard stories of people who’ve lost people to suicide. I’ve had conversations with people. You don’t realize how much it affects other people. You just hear the saddest stories.”

Heather said she plans to write a short inspirational message to go with her video when it is completed and she plans to share it online. “Hopefully people will be inspired to share it with others,” she said. “I just hope it doesn’t end with the video. It could be a kick start to inspire other people to make videos and share them with friends.”

She said she hopes people who might be considering suicide would search and find a reason to go on, a reason not to end their lives.

Young people especially have so much potential, Heather said, and she hopes that like with the motivation to keep her wheels turning on this journey she can inspire them to keep going, to keep moving forward.

“There is no magic here,” Kevin Briggs, who’s rescued people from the Golden Gate Bridge, writes in his recent book, “just empathy and the ability to lend an ear and show compassion for your fellow man. And with that comes the power to prevent suicide.”

  • BReynolds33

    I applaud the effort. Any time anyone wants to try to raise the conversation about mental illness and / or suicide, I’m fully on board. Sadly, I have my doubts anyone is listening, or cares to hear the message.

    As is evident by the fact that I am the first one to comment on this article.

  • crystals

    Thank you. I *do* think people are listening, and I think messages like this matter.

  • Veronica

    Depression is a yucky, icky, terrible place to be. It’s a hole that I fall into from time to time. I’m doing all of the “right” things– meds, therapy, things that I happen to think are self care– but it’s still a scary place to be. I have a handful of friends and a great husband who I can be honest with when the depression or anxiety gets to be too much, but there are still people in my life that can’t be bothered to empathize, or they don’t know what to say and make it worse.

    Beyond that, I don’t have any answers.

  • lindblomeagles

    Like drug addiction and sexual abuse, suicide is one of the challenges our country does a real poor job of making time for. We just don’t want to think about it until this 17 year old leaps from a High Bridge in the raging Mississippi River, or a professional football player, like Junior Seau, drives himself over a cliff due to significant, persistent brain injuries. We’re losing far too many young adults and children to all three of these things, and can’t stop it until we start publicly talking about it.

  • CHS

    It’s sadly timely that this is brought to my attention, as I’m attending a neighborhood workshop for the reconstruction of the highbridge tonight. The bridge is due for a refit in a few years and neighborhood workshops are being organized to get feedback from the people that are neighbors of the highbridge. I’ll be mentioning this effort at the meeting. I drive over the highbridge every day, and I see makeshift or spontaneous memorials or other things far too often, replacing that with a message of hope and direction to assist seems fitting. My only hope is that the state doesn’t just put a fence over the rails to discourage people, and say they did their part.

  • Khatti

    I’m working on a story right now about two people who commit suicide as a political protest against against a social policy that most MPR listeners would support. Suicide is something that I tentatively support as a right. The problem I have is no one really has a good answer to who owns your life if you don’t: family? Society? If my life does belong to Society should I try and figure out just who Society is? After all, Society might need its lawn mowed or toilet cleaned and, as his/hers/its property, I assume that it’s my responsibility to do the deed.

    Having said that there is nothing happy-making about a Seventeen year old committing suicide.