My friend Eddie with whom I had become acquainted at an AA meeting in a small Northwest Arkansas town in 1993 checked into a local Marriott Hotel one Thursday evening. He had only his briefcase and a loaded 38-caliber revolver. Eddie sat at the desk in his room and scribbled a quick note to his wife, Eileen. “I’m sorry,” he wrote. Eddie then pointed the barrel of the revolver into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

 

Eddie left behind his wife of 18 years and two beautiful young children. He also left behind a shingle: Eddie Jacobson, Attorney-at-Law. At 42, it seemed Eddie had everything. Everything, that is, except freedom from nagging clinical depression, which he tried in vain to self-medicate with alcohol and when he got sober by working the 12 Steps of AA there was no more booze, but plenty of depression.

 

“Eddie,” his AA sponsor said, “you don’t need anti-depressants. You just need to work the Steps a little harder.”

 

Fear of stigma attached to mental illness keeps people like Eddie’s sponsor in draconian ignorance.

Every death ruled a suicide should be listed as caused by depression. It is easily treatable, but the stigma attached to getting help can be fatal. My younger brother killed himself when he was 35. Our sister died by her own hand five years later at 40. My brother and sister chose to die rather than seek help.

Our kids need better education in our public schools about mental disorders, which are the leading cause of disability in the United States . An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older - about 1 in 4 adults - suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.

This fact should not be forgotten when a 42-year-old lawyer with a wife and two young children checks into a hotel and blows his brains out and we are left to ask why.

Tom Roberts is both a patient and mental health advocate in Southern California. He is a former broadcast journalist and college professor now speaking and writing full-time. He is writing a book about his experience with Bipolar Disorder. Email: tom@4clearcommunication.com