Solutions, memories, shared at Suicide Awareness Walk

Nearly 100 people assembled on the quad at Montana State University-Northern Thursday night for a walk to raise awareness about suicide.

The Second Annual Hill County Suicide Awareness Walk was organized by the Hill County Mental Health Local Advisory Committee, a committee dedicated to identifying and strengthening mental health services in Hill County.

Representatives from the Havre chapter of the National Alliance for Mental Illness, or NAMI, and the Montana Department of Veterans Affairs set up tables where they distributed information. Many walkers wore free light blue and purple - the colors associated with suicide prevention - tie-dye T-shirts distributed before the walk. Some also held signs with messages about suicide.

The walk itself  started on the quad, went  east to 11th Street and up past the dorms and back up to quad.

Before the walk began, people had a chance to make luminaries from white paper bags with names written on them and containing gravel and lit candles.

Several people whose lives have been touched by suicide spoke to the crowd. Mark Cichosz of Havre was one of them.

Cichosz's nephew Larry Joseph Morsette III, or L.J., as he was known to friends and family, hung himself last December shortly before Christmas.

Cichosz said that Morsette could enter a room and just through his smile people would know just how much he cared.

"He could walk up to you and make you feel like he was your brother," Cichosz said.

However, he said, Morsette had been secretly fighting battles hroughout his life, ones that he often kept concealed even from his family.

Juliane Hallows, a suicide prevention coordinator for the Montana Department of Veterans Affairs, said being there for someone can help prevent suicide.

She said that suicide is preventable, but it will involve everyone helping those who might be thinking about taking their own lives.

Hallows said that for the past 30 years, Montana has been in the top five states in the nation in the number of suicides. She said she attributes the high suicide rate to the easy access to gun and other lethal means in the state, social isolation, the high number of people living in remote areas and the shortage of therapists and other mental health professionals.

There is a stigma around mental health in Montana, which dissuades people from seeking out the help they need. Hallows said.

She said people often are open and readily talk about health conditions and treatments for physical ailments and other issues, but not mental health.

"When someone says I thought of not waking up today, people get quiet," Hallows said.

She added that when some people mention they are going to a therapist, people might walk away.

  Hallows said work needs to be done to normalize discussion of such issues

"If we can normalize that, if we can reach out to someone and say, 'Hey, I know what it is like I felt  that,' if we can recognize the signs of suicide, we can significantly prevent death by suicide," she said.

Hallows said life is often like an ocean. Sometimes waters are calm and other times turbulent. People in those turbulent waters sometimes have the support they need, while others feel  like they are swimming alone and do not know they have such supports.

She said engaging people and connecting them with services or letting them know "someone is coming with a life raft" is crucial. Such rafts can include a crisis hotline number, a school counselor or a loved one.

Hallows said symptoms of someone who is at risk of suicide include asking about death or ways to die, giving away precious possessions, constantly expressing hopelessness through social media forums like Facebook and giving what Hallows referred to as that thank you, goodbye speech.

If a person sees someone exhibiting such symptoms, Hallow said, they should ask that person if they are feeling hopeless or have had suicidal thoughts. They should validate how that person feels, take the threat seriously and then expedite treatment, often by getting them in touch with a therapist or being with them while they call a crisis hotline.

"Suicide is definitely preventable, but it is going to take each and everyone of us being there," Hallows said.