Thursday, October 15, 2009
Event offers support for survivors of suicide
The Out of the Darkness Walk aims to help those who are grieving.
JESSICA MARCY The Roanoke Times
Out of the Darkness, a fundraiser for mental health research, will be held Saturday at noon in Wasena Park.
Click the button above to see all of our community coverage, or go straight to your community's homepage with the menu below.
More community health stories
- Blood drive relies on team support
- Rocky Mount Lifestyle Health Center focuses on heart health
- Dozens of walkers brave the cold
- American Heart AssociationHealthy as a walk in the park
- Carilion Breast Care Center: Survivors march forward
Archive
She plastered posters on the walls along the city's downtown streets. She handed out brochures to friends and strangers. She recorded advertisements with a local radio station.
The day Renae Martin found that her only child had hanged himself in her living room, she told herself she would not hide it from the world. She decided: I want everyone to know that people battling depression can get help, and that a relative committing suicide is no reason for shame.
Martin, 46, wants the world to know this, too: There is support for the ones left behind.
"Everyone handles it a different way," she said. "But I think this helps everyone know they're not alone."
The message on Martin's posters and brochures is for the Out of the Darkness Walk, which is sponsored by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and is scheduled for Saturday at noon at Wasena Park in Roanoke. It is two things: A fundraiser for research on mental health issues that lead people to take their own lives, and an opportunity for survivors during their grief process.
At the first walk in Roanoke last year, about 35 people participated. But there could be many more in the region who have had a relative or a friend take his or her own life. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 33,300 people committed suicide in the United States in 2006. Of those, 876 were from Virginia.
Each one is a story. There's Austin Betts Frazier, a James Madison University junior whose family paid for obituaries in newspapers across the state this month. "He succumbed to a quiet, insidious disease: Bi-Polar disorder," the obituary said. "Bi-Polar is incurable and as deadly as cancer or heart disease. It is a disease of the mind and one's mental outlook."
There's Stephanie Barragy, a 37-year-old woman whose health was also ravaged by bipolar disorder and who shot herself in November 2007, leaving behind three children.
"I raised more than $1,200 for the walk, and I was glad about it, but then it made me realize the reason I did it," said Barragy's mother, Jean Cornell, a retiree living in Pocahontas County, W.Va.
And there's Martin's son, Anthony Parrott. He had been recruited for the U.S. Army but later faced hurdles when he was charged with driving under the influence, his mother said. He got buried under medical bills before his mother could find out, and in April 2007 he hanged himself after a night of heavy drinking. He was 21.
Since then, Martin has become a spokeswoman to the people around her regarding mental health. According to the American Association of Suicidology, two out of three people who commit suicide are depressed at the time of their deaths. The association also says that shame or embarrassment might prevent a survivor from reaching out for help.
"When you find a group of people who have been through the same, you can talk about it. Not only do we share a tragedy but we share a passion to prevent it," Martin said. "It's a club that no one wants to belong to."
