01.24.00

By Elana Simms

The morning after her father killed himself, Karen Marshall said she "woke up to a cold, gray dawn." She was a 17-year-old high school senior in 1973 when her father, Ed Marshall, took his hunting rifle to work and ended his life. His suicide left Karen Marshall confused and despondent.

"I didn’t know another family that had ever been through what my family went through," Marshall said. "I sat there and wondered how the sun could possibly rise on a world that didn’t have my father in it anymore."

Karen Marshall’s story and similar ones have prompted Virginia legislators to propose that the state increase its suicide prevention efforts. Under a bill filed in the General Assembly, the state’s Commission on Youth and Department of Health would team up to develop a comprehensive suicide prevention plan, targeting the needs of children and adolescents.

The third leading cause of death among young people, suicide has increased by 32 percent among Virginians ages 10 to 19 since 1975.

"The time has come for Virginia citizens, with assistance from our state government, to combat this epidemic," said Sen. William Mims, R-Loudoun, the legislation’s chief patron. "Every suicide is preventable." His bill, unveiled Jan. 17 at a press conference, was developed to bring attention to a study published this month by the Virginia Department of Health.

According to the study, Virginia can prevent suicide by focusing on four areas:

• Promoting health development.

• Providing early identification and intervention for people at risk for suicide.

• Helping individuals in need during a crisis.

• Helping attempted suicide survivors and/or witnesses of suicide.

"This study," Mims said, "is a blueprint of how Virginia can construct an effective prevention and intervention network."

He said those efforts would cost money. Mims said his bill would earmark $1 million annually for the next two years to fund specific suicide prevention and intervention programs by the Department of Health and the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services.

The legislation also recommends that the Virginia Department of Health coordinate suicide prevention activities, including research and data collection on suicide and depression, professional and public information efforts and training.

"These steps are the beginning of a concerted effort, a partnership between citizens who care and who want to make a difference and their state government," Mims said. "This partnership will save lives. The effort we begin today will not be completed this year, but it’s important that we take this very critical first step."

Delegate Phillip Hamilton, R-Newport News, chairman of the Youth Commission, said he wholeheartedly supports the suicide prevention legislation.

"There is a lot of rhetoric about our young people, who are only 25 percent of our population, but 100 percent of our future," said Hamilton, who has two children, ages 21 and 18. "It’s about time that we started to address a healthy future for our young people."

Reese Butler, chairman of the California-based Kristen Brook’s Hope Center, founded a crisis line with insurance money collected from the death of his wife. Butler said his wife committed suicide because of postpartum depression.

"There is so much misconception about suicide. Postpartum depression is probably the biggest one," he said. "We estimate that more than 600 women a year kill themselves because of it in the country. One (death) is too many."

Karen Witt’s son killed himself at the age of 17. Tim Witt struggled with depression and a weight problem long before he took his own life.

" I knew he had depression problems," she said. "He wasn’t allowed to have any weapons in the house and I knew he had been at that point before. He just didn’t have the means to do it. He would often make comments like I think I’ll just drive off the bridge one day, or something like that. I was really watching him. It’s hard to watch someone 24 hours a day."

Like any other disease, depression will kill if left untreated, Marshall said.

"But because suicide happens in this community and that corner of the world, we don’t bring the numbers together," Marshall said. "Until the survivors begin to speak up and say, ‘This is happening more than you know,’ until we begin telling our own stories, I don’t think we’ll grasp the magnitude of the problem."

Seventeen years after Ed Marshall committed suicide, his brother shot and killed himself. The two suicides happened less than a mile apart.

The premature deaths in Karen Marshall’s family have inspired her to combat suicide and the illness of depression.

"At that time, I knew I had to do something, I had to address this and make a difference or I was going to die myself."