Running to combat mental illness
Stopping suicide is their mission
Boston native Ana Febres-CorDero did not feel fear before choking down a lethal dose of painkillers in her college dorm room last October. In her mind, it was the only way to escape the agony and isolation of depression.
“I wasn’t nervous or scared,” said Febres-CorDero, 20. “I told myself it was the right thing to do.”
But the grief she would leave behind gave her pause.
“The only thing I was worried about was everyone else,” she said. “How they would react.”
She told herself, “It’ll only be really hard for a year or so. But after that, it’ll just be something to honor and remember, and then life goes on.”
Thankfully, Febres-CorDero — then a student at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania — had a change of heart. She made it to the emergency room before her organs could begin shutting down.
As alone as Febres-CorDero felt the night she tried to take her life, she was anything but.
Suicide rates among people 15-24 are three times higher now than they were in the 1950s. It is a leading cause of death among those 15-34, second only to car accidents.
Febres-CorDero has since sought psychiatric help and hopes to combat those soaring numbers. She and her father, Rafael, will run the Boston Marathon next month and raise money for Belmont’s McLean Hospital, which provides mental health treatment.
“I want people to know there is a light at the end of the tunnel,” she said.
Febres-CorDero’s struggle began during her junior year of high school. She went through dark periods she chalked up to normal adolescent stress.
But her transition to college marked the beginning of her descent to rock bottom. She fell ill the summer after graduation, and was no longer able to run cross-country. She cycled through eating disorders that seemed only to worsen over time.
In hindsight, her father said, she seemed defeated the day her parents dropped her off at Dickinson.
“She was always a very joyful girl, but I saw a change in her eyes and in her attitude,” Rafael said. “It didn’t register then that it was probably a signal of a larger issue.”
Experts are stymied trying to explain why suicide rates keep spiking, but mounting pressures for adolescents — along with all the time spent on social media — could account for some of the mental distress, said Dr. Dana Sarvey, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at McLean Hospital.
“With social media and time spent on devices, at what point does that have an effect on our prosocial behaviors and interactions?” Sarvey said. “Communication styles have totally changed.”
For Febres-CorDero, the stigma of mental illness was the primary barrier to getting help.
“I didn’t want to burden anyone with my problems,” she said. “But you should never feel ashamed to reach out for help. It’s called a mental illness for a reason.”