DESPAIR IN COVID
Hope for preventing suicide is here, Joy Sewing writes.
A few days after my father died from cancer in August, a childhood friend called to offer her condolences.
Her father had died several years earlier, so we shared stories about our fathers and lessons they taught us. Proud Daddy’s girls.
We talked for an hour, catching up on a decade of life. We promised to stay in touch and hug each other tightly once the pandemic eased and things got back to normal.
Three weeks later, she took her own life.
I’ve replayed our conversation in my head, searching for a clue that I could have picked up on had I not been swallowed by my own intense grief.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made things worse for many of those who suffer from depression, anxiety and mental illness. It’s expected to exacerbate the nation’s suicide health crisis. Suicide is the 10th-leading cause of death in the United States, with more than 43,000 Americans dying by suicide and 1.4 million attempted suicides in 2018, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
Symptoms of anxiety and depression increased considerably in the United States from April through June, compared with the same period in 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. During late June, 40 percent of U.S. adults reported struggling with mental health and substance abuse, according to the CDC.
With September recognized as National Suicide Prevention Month, words of hope and healing come from Juanita Campbell Rasmus, co-pastor and spiritual leader at St. John’s Downtown church, who has been open about her own depression and anxiety.
In her new book, “Learning to Be: Finding Your Center After the Bottom Falls Out” (InterVarsity Press, $21.99), with a foreword by her longtime friend Tina Knowles Lawson (mother of Beyoncé and Solange), Rasmus chronicles her own breakdown, or “crash,” as she calls it, in 1999 after years of discounting feelings of stress and fatigue while trying to be the “flawless wife, the impeccable mother and the textbook pastor.”
“My needing to be perfect and need for acceptance and approval became my narrative,” Rasmus said. “Somehow as a child, I got the message, you could be mad, happy, glad or sad. If you’re mad, you better get glad. So what do you do with feelings of frustration, anger, disappointment and rejection and other emotions? The reality is we have feelings for a reason. Feelings invite us to notice what we’re noticing.”
Rasmus sought out professional help. She took antidepressants and went into therapy to uncover emotions she had never dealt with. It helped her heal.
“I was mentally numb, physically numb, emotionally numb,” she said. “I remember being in bed. I slept 18 to 20 hours a day, and there were days when I couldn’t even think about how to go to the bathroom. I remember laying in bed and turning my head from one side to the other and thinking, ‘What is that horrible smell?’ And then it dawned on me I hadn’t bathed in months. I didn’t have the energy to get out of bed to bathe.”
Even those with fame, notoriety and seemly blessed lives struggle.
Former first lady Michelle Obama shared on her “Michelle Obama Podcast” that she’s suffering a “low-grade depression” from the pandemic and the nation’s racial and political strife. “I’m waking up in the middle of the night because I’m worrying about something or there’s a heaviness,” she said.
Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, too, has talked publicly about seeking help in the off season for anxiety and depression brought on by the death of his older brother by suicide in April and the pandemic. Prescott revealed he was still dealing with grief from his mother’s death from colon cancer in 2013.
Also, actresses Emma Stone and Reese Witherspoon, who have both suffered with anxiety, recently shared ways they are coping through the Child Mind
Institute’s #WeThriveInside digital initiative.
In Houston, Menninger Clinic, a nationally ranked psychiatric facility, has received more calls in the past month than at any time in the past five years, said Dr. Jonathan Stevens, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry and chief of outpatient services at the clinic.
It’s an especially challenging time for children. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for ages 15 to 19, and for every teen who dies by suicide, there are at least 200 who have attempted it. Minority populations disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 may also face a similar impact when it comes to mental health, Stevens said.
Social distancing and quarantining can have psychological consequences, including loneliness, isolation and boredom.
“Many of us are seeing the value of schools more clearly now than before. It’s not just about education,” Stevens said.
For some children, especially in underserved communities, it’s a place for food, counseling, mentoring and a place where adults can monitor children who might be experiencing abuse at home, Stevens said. It’s a place of solidarity so that children don’t feel alone and a place for athletics and exercise, which are good for combating depression.
One of the techniques Rasmus used to help her through the darkness of depression is deep breathing.
Taking deep breaths, she said, for just five minutes each morning can be calming. In her book, Rasmus says that her husband, Rudy, would remind her to take it slow during her recovery. “‘Juanita, remember to use your low beams,’ ” she writes. It was code for her to slow down and breathe.
“We all are feeling this pandemic,” Rasmus said. “It’s an uncertainty. We don’t know when this is going to be over, so we’re taking on a bit of that energy. We have to be real intentional about doing things that give us life, like knowing you’re at the point where the kids need to go back to day care.”
That struck a chord with me. After nearly seven months of working at home while singleparenting two young children who need constant supervision, I could not do it any longer. I was exhausted mentally and physically. So I sent my children off to school armed with prayers, masks and specific instructions on how to wash their hands as often as possible.
For Lynne Jones, an interior designer, the political strife combined with the pandemic has left her feeling hopeless. She tries to stay positive by watching romantic comedies, reading novels by Dorothea Benton
Frank and listening to music, but still it’s not enough.
“I’ve never been depressed in my life,” Jones said. “My husband tells me to pace myself and not to pay too much attention to the news. I try to stay busy with distractions, but I’m thinking about going to see a therapist. I turn 65 in January, and I’m scared.”
Valaencia Thompson, 30, an account executive, has increased her therapy sessions from every two weeks before the pandemic to weekly now. Her therapist recently diagnosed her with compassion fatigue, a feeling of hopelessness and overwhelm when hearing of the suffering of others. Thompson said it’s partly related to the death of her grandfather from COVID-19 in July.
“This is not normal. We are not supposed to get used to this, so I’m learning to give myself grace,” said Thompson, who is the founder of Glittered in Goals, a community for Black women to focus on mental health and wellness. “I’m taking it day by day, and I’m trying to focus on things that are directly in my control.”
At my friend’s funeral, I sat with my two young children in a near-empty pew. We were social distancing.
The program included a beautiful photo of my friend. She looked like I had always remembered her; she never seemed to age.
“Is she with Big Daddy in heaven?” asked my daughter.
The grandchildren in my family called my dad by that name.
“Yes, sweetheart, she is, and I think she’s happy,” I said.