The Out of the Darkness walk is 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 4.
To register or make donations on behalf of a participant, sign up online at: www.outofthedarkness.org. Look in "New York events" for North Country Out of the Darkness.
Also, participants can register until 11:45 a.m. at the Speed-Skating Oval in Lake Placid before the walk. Sign-in begins at noon.
For more information, contact Debra or Doug Jerdo at 891-0351.
Half of the funds raised by walking Out of the Darkness will remain in the North Country for mental-health programs.
The other half will go to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention for research and outreach programs.
TO GET HELP
If you're considering suicide, you can get help by calling the following numbers:
Clinton County Mental Health, 566-0259.
Essex County Mental Health Clinic, 873-3670.
Frankin County Social Services, 481-1808.
The toll-free Clinton County suicide hot line number is (866) 577-3836 or (866) 5PREVENT. Out-of-county calls are accepted but other options are:
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, (800) 273-TALK (8255).
The Essex County Mental Health Association Hope Line, (800) 440-8074.
That last number is staffed around the clock, but the phone system handles limited calls. If there's no answer, hang up and try again. Or call 911 or go to your closest emergency room.
LAKE PLACID — Much of what people think about suicide is fraught with myth, tangled in a trap of grief and horror.
Dispelling it and removing the stigma is akin to bringing light out of darkness. Doing so could save lives, say organizers of the Out of the Darkness memory walk scheduled here for Oct. 4.
For the first time in this region, hundreds will gather for the event at the Speed-skating Oval and walk around Mirror Lake remembering loved ones and sharing support.
Out of the Darkness is a national outreach created by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and has branded hundreds of walks nationwide. Donations collected by walkers help fund mental-health programs.
TALK OPENLY
The Lake Placid event was brought by the efforts of co-chairmen Debra and Doug Jerdo of Saranac Lake, whose son Joshua died by suicide in 2005, and Peter Wood, manager at Lakeside House Inc., a transition home in Saranac Lake for people living with mental illness.
Mrs. Jerdo spoke to teachers and staff at Saranac Lake High School last week, addressing their offers to help.
Placing a framed photo of Josh on the podium, she cleared her voice.
"Mental illness, depression, suicide are words people whisper," she said. "It is something people don't want to talk about. But it takes my breath away, literally, to think there might have been a different outcome."
Reaching for the edge of people's understanding, Mrs. Jerdo encouraged teachers and school staff to openly talk about suicide, to ask what young people are feeling.
Joshua died by suicide a few years after his sister Lindsay died suddenly of meningococcal meningitis.
"To lose a brother or a sister who you think you're going to have the rest of your life with, you never expect that," Mrs. Jerdo said. "We thought depression was a part of grief and it is. But on Feb. 24, 2005, Joshua took his own life. This was a journey none of us ever expected."
The school staff listened closely as Mrs. Jerdo asked the Art Club to help draw and design 35 signs illustrating myths about suicide and a banner to carry.
"The signs will be posted around the oval, and then the walk goes out and into town around Mirror Lake," Mrs. Jerdo explained.
By that day, 148 people had signed up to walk, some to raise money, others to take first steps toward prevention.
By this week, the marching numbers topped 300.
EDUCATION NEEDED
Nicole Osgood, a freshman at SUNY Potsdam and Lake Placid High School graduate, has raised more than $1,200 for the walk in memory of her uncle Bruce Osgood, who died by suicide four years ago in Georgia.
For her senior project, Nicole completed a presentation on suicide prevention and delivered it to 10th- and 12th-grade students in Lake Placid last year.
She'll be coming home Columbus Day to present it again.
"It took a lot of work. A lot of this project was actual closure for me, but I opened up and did a lot of thorough research for it," she said.
Much of what she learned challenged myths about suicide, in particular, that people believe if they talk about it with someone who is depressed or suffering mental illness, it will push them over the edge.
Even Lake Placid School officials questioned the topic of her presentation, at first.
"They were so scared it was going to happen to someone in the school if I brought it up," Nicole said.
"But I told them this is an important issue that needs to be talked about, because if people don't talk about it, they have no way to deal with their feelings and it pushes them closer to the edge, or over."
Mr. Jerdo echoed Nicole's thought.
"Suicide needs to be talked about," he said in an e-mail message. "All too often, society looks down on the event, the individual and the families: usually forgetting the person's life and remembering their death. Even insurance companies have problems addressing depression and other mental illness. More education and knowledge about mental illness must be brought to the light and brought out of the darkness."
ACT OF AGONY
Phyllis Lawrenz will be walking beside the Jerdos Oct. 4 in memory of her son Eric who died at age 20 four years ago by suicide.
She sees stigma as a barrier to help.
"I think the most significant stigma is how it keeps people who have depression or anxiety or any sort of mental-health issues from getting help. They don't want to seek help. They don't want people to know. It's seen as a sign of weakness," she said.
"How could the world change? Mental-health insurance could be covered by insurance at the same level of coverage as physical illnesses so people could go and get treatment. And there just aren't enough services. We need more counselors, and our social services agencies are often poorly funded."
Event co-chair Wood said one of the biggest misconceptions is that people who die by suicide are selfish.
"I try to think about what is going on inside someone's head to make that decision — the hurt and loneliness that they must feel. These people were not selfish. They were hurting inside."
In her appeal letter for Out of the Darkness, Mrs. Jerdo said Joshua "was neither a coward nor a hero because of dying. We KNOW he did not want to die, but to just end the pain ... and the only way he knew how to end it was to self-destruct. We never want this to be experienced by anyone else. Some people think only certain 'types' die by suicide. I am here to tell you ... that just isn't true."
E-mail Kim Smith Dedam at: kdedam@pressrepublican.com
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