A suicide crisis is the crucial time to save a life

Editor's note: This is the second in a three-part series addressing suicide prevention, crisis and recovery. The first part can be found here. The third part will run Tuesday, Sept. 12. This is also part of weeklong coverage addressing the issues surrounding suicide on KSL.com, KSL Newsradio and KSL TV.SALT LAKE CITY — It was the recurring thoughts of inadequacy that drove 17-year-old Elijah Dean to consider ending his life.

Depression overwhelmed him, like a turbulent wave that refused to settle and continued crashing, again and again.

“For me, it started with low self-esteem thoughts, like, ‘I’m not doing well. I’m not enjoying this. I want to be done.’ You look for other options that allow you to do that, and suicide was one of them,” Elijah, now 18, said.

The Provo High student had been the kind of person friends would open up to and ask for help. But two years of caring for his mother, who was in and out of the hospital, had taken their toll.

For the teen, thoughts of suicide came suddenly. Once he contemplated the idea, they kept returning.

“If you asked me before I went through this, no, I would never. And I was trying to actually tell myself that when I was suffering depression, (but) the thought would come … and every time, it became a little more real.”

Each experience with crisis is unique, but experts and trained mental health professionals say there are ways for loved ones of those struggling with suicidal ideation — and those individuals themselves — to combat and prepare for mental health crises that may otherwise end in loss of life.

_{Elijah Dean talks to KSL and explains what eventually helped pull him out of suicidal thoughts.}What crisis looks like

Kim Meyers, suicide prevention coordinator with the Utah Department of Human Services, distinctly remembers a story she once heard of a man who attempted suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

He had been hearing voices in his head telling him to die, and he was sure his family would be better off without him. He made a pact with himself — as suicidal people often do — that if one person reached out to him and asked him if he were OK, he would tell them everything and ask for help.

He sat on the edge of the bridge for 40 minutes openly crying. People passed him by. No one did anything.

“The second I jumped, I knew the only thing in my life that I couldn’t change was that I had just jumped,” Meyers said as she recounted the survivor’s words.

That stuck with her, and she knew one of the most critical parts of her work would be helping those who struggled with suicidal ideation to realize what that survivor realized before they themselves jumped, metaphorically or literally.

Those in crisis often make rash decisions they wouldn't normally consider, as high emotions exacerbate mental health issues, said Dr. Doug Gray, a child psychiatrist at the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute.

“I worked with (a teenager) who was actually suicidal for 15 minutes only. (He broke) up with a girlfriend and went looking for (his) dad’s gun, but I had asked the dad to lock up the gun, which he had done,” Gray said.

“He couldn’t find (the gun), and his phone rang and it was a friend, and the friend came over to the house, and he was fine after that. So I remember asking the teen after, ‘So you wouldn’t really have used the gun?’ And he said, ‘Dr. Gray, I would have.’”

Firearms were responsible for 51 percent of suicide deaths in Utah from 2012 until 2014, followed by suffocation and poisoning, according to data from the Utah Department of Health.

Parents can take measures to ensure their child or teen doesn’t make a tragic choice in the middle of a crisis by locking up and securing any firearms that are in the house.

For an individual experiencing severe depression or another mental health issue, a moment of crisis can be triggered by an overwhelming event, or even a big change, that can cause individuals to believe things that aren't true, Gray said. Many who contemplate suicide believe their families would be better off without them or that life cannot get better. They see suicide as the best option.

_{KSL NewsRadio's Doug Wright talks to experts on what you can do if you or a loved one is feeling suicidal, as well as the signs to watch for.}“I think of suicide as a health issue but also as a societal issue. There’s something going on to where people are not feeling hopeful in increasing numbers and don’t see opportunity or goodness out there," Meyers said. "And we really need to change that as a community and in our health care systems. We want to empower them to say, ‘Yeah, I can think about this, and I don’t have to act on it, and here are the ways I’m going to counter those thoughts or change what’s happening.'”

Help for those in crisis

Through its suicide prevention outreach program, state officials work with schools and health care providers to screen individuals and identify those who may be at risk for a mental health crisis. They encourage educators and providers to ask those in their charge questions about factors that may indicate a mental health issue, Meyers said. They hope over time to broaden the reach of these screenings.

If someone shows warning signs, the state offers training and counseling to at-risk individuals and their family members to prepare for that crisis.

A key part of those trainings, according to Meyers, is to encourage people to have a visible and easily accessible checklist of names and numbers of people who could help in the event of a crisis. The National Alliance on Mental Illness, including the Utah chapter, calls this a “wellness recovery action plan," also commonly known as a safety plan.

For a patient in crisis, experts recommend seeking treatment immediately, though that treatment may look different for everyone. Inpatient treatment involves admission to a hospital so the individual in crisis can be closely monitored until medical professionals deem it safe for them to be released. Outpatient treatment offers the individual intensive therapy sessions and medical treatment, but they can go home and go about their normal schedule, when reasonable.

Most in severe crisis require inpatient treatment, yet some run into roadblocks while trying to access these services.

Finding crisis help in a rural area that lacks resources can be more difficult, and receiving treatment that works with a specific insurance can be challenging. Sometimes, there are simply not enough beds at a hospital to take all patients experiencing crisis.

"When we built this beautiful hospital (the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute), … we had so many beds, I didn’t think we’d run out," Gray said. "And we’re full almost every night, and there are people trying to get in the hospital that can’t get in."

Luckily for a patient experiencing crisis, the hospitals in the area will pay for patients to be transferred to a different hospital with open beds, Gray said. But sometimes everywhere's full.

According to Gray, sometimes it requires a fight — often a long one — to receive the care necessary, but it's worth it.

"We're doing a little bit of a lot of things," Meyers said. "We need to be doing a lot of a lot of things."

Hope in the darkness

For Elijah, however, thoughts of ending his life kept recurring until he decided to no longer fight them.

“I think actually one of my lowest points was when I really deeply thought about suicide and wanted to go through with it that day, that night. But the recurring thought I had then was, ‘What would my family think? What would my best friend think? And what would my dad think?’” he said.

He left on a drive up Provo Canyon, something that often relaxed him. It was there he decided he wanted to end his life, though the thought scared him. After a moment of hesitation, he turned the wheel and went home.

On the drive back, he screamed and yelled in frustration that he wasn’t following through with his plan. The last thing he wanted to do was go home and continue dealing with the depression that had taken over who he was. But as he neared home, something in him changed.

“I drove home and I felt in that moment that, possibly in that moment, I had that ounce of self-worth. That I was here for a reason. That I can help others that are going through this.”

Coming Up:

- Monday at 1:30, KSL Newsradio's Jay Mcfarland dives into the role social media plays: What is helpful? What is harmful? - Tuesday, our KSL.com series continues on the topic of recovery. - Tune in to KSL Newsradio Tuesday at 7:11 a.m. and 5:11 p.m. as Mary Richards discusses resources available for those who are in crisis. - Thursday, KSL-TV will talk about the problems some run into when looking for resources, and how they navigated a sometimes tricky system. - Saturday, join supporters at the Out of Darkness suicide prevention walk at Liberty Park from 11:30 to 1. Registration begins at 9 a.m.

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