‘YOU ARE SOMEBODY’
Look for signals of hopelessness, mental health expert tells conference
Rhonda Mattox, a psychiatrist out of Little Rock, gave her unique perspective as a suicide survivor Thursday during the “Moving Forward: Suicide Prevention Conference 2018” at the Arlington Hotel Resort & Spa.
Mattox started by having attendees tell those seated near them a simple statement — “You are somebody.”
“Somebody really needs to hear that because many times when we are thinking about life’s big issues we think ‘Somebody needs to do something,’” she said. “The next time someone is telling you that someone or somebody needs to do something, I want you to be sure to tell them ‘You are somebody.’”
Mattox said oftentimes individuals look at suicide prevention from the wrong angle by telling people they need to live, but not what they need to live for.
“You’ve heard it said frequently ‘When life hands you lemons, make lemonade,’” she said. “But I am here to tell you that sometimes life can hand you so many lemons that you are about to drown in all that lemonade. I know I’m not the only one.”
Looking for signals of hopelessness in people and listening for comments
that nobody cares or would care if they were gone are keys to start helping. Mattox said professionals and peers may consider these as cries for attention, but she said that attention is needed.
“Many of us in this room have been in this room sitting beside each other and never taken the time to meet each other,” she said, adding that inaccuracies abound as to who suicide affects. Suicide does not discriminate.
“Teenagers are the second-largest group of people committing suicide,” she said. “Teenagers and young adults, black people and people of color, this is what I heard growing up — ‘Black people don’t kill themselves,’ ‘Christians don’t kill themselves.’ I am right here to tell you that is a lie.”
Mattox said she has personally been affected by suicide, having contemplated it herself and losing a loved one earlier this year to it.
“I declined the invitation to talk because I was afraid that I might cry in this situation because this year, in March, I lost a cousin to suicide,” she said. “As a provider, who had been the chair of the planning committee on suicide prevention, you would think that I would navigate this road a little more easily. You would think that I would not have as much pain. You would think that I would know all the right words to say.
“I did not want to tell you that story because I always like to speak from a place of strength, but strength is an illusion. One of the number one things I hear people say is ‘I should be stronger. I feel like I’m weak.’ After you pour, and pour, and pour into another person, your cup is empty and it’s really, really empty.”
Pride often plays a role in people not asking for help, she said, herself included. While in medical school, Mattox said for a year after the death of her mother, she pictured herself committing suicide every day. Depression consumed her and if it were not for a professor seeing a drastic change in her character, she would likely not be here today.
“He called and got the doc on the phone which was a miracle number one,” she said. “She said ‘I’ll see her today,’ and anyone that has ever tried to get a psychiatrist knows that is miracle number two. He picked up his keys and he drove me there, and he stayed. Had he not driven me there, I wouldn’t have gone. Had he not stayed, he would have dropped me off and I would have left.
“Sometimes we have to look at the people around us and make eye contact and see that they are changing. They used to come on time, they used to make As and now they make Fs. They used to smile and now they’re not. When I went to see the psychiatrist, and I was mad, but she said something to me. … ‘If what you are doing is working for you, then keep doing it.’ Well, it wasn’t. I was about to flunk out of med school. I was about to kill myself, really, because eventually, I was going to do it. I saw myself doing it every day. What I was doing was not working for me.”
Had she not walked through depression and suicidal ideation, Mattox said she would not be the health care provider that she is today.
“I would be telling them ‘Pull yourself up by your bootstraps,’” she said. “But some of them don’t have bootstraps. The message is ‘This is temporary and we’re not going to do that.’”
Mattox left attendees with a goal to make their problems and struggles work for them in the long run.
“People tell you when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade, but let me flip that up for you,” she said. “When life hands you lemons, you take those seeds, you plant them and grow some lemons. You make some lemonade and get a patent on that lemonade recipe. You build some lemonade stands and take those lemons to the market and sell them. You franchise lemonade stands and make some change out of it. It needs to work for you one day.”