450 Walk Suicide Out Of The Shadows

Three weeks ago, 21-year-old Alli MacIniss was riding in an ambulance she had called on herself after a deliberate overdose.

On Sunday, she was one of the first to finish a 5K walk for suicide awareness, a route she had walked for the first time two years earlier in memory of a close friend who, unlike MacInnis, had not survived an attempt to kill herself.

Over 450 individuals joined MacInnis in Hamden’s Town Center Park on Oct. 3 for New Haven County’s 10th ​“Out of the Darkness” community walk.

The walk was one of several planned throughout Connecticut during September (which is national suicide prevention month) and October. Eleven years ago, Hamden resident Suzann Kober brought these American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) community walks to the town and the Greater New Haven area after her son, Zachary, killed himself.

What started as a group of 100 walkers has grown to nearly 500 over the past decade. Hamden’s walk Sunday raised over $35,000. AFSP will continue to take donations, which can go directly to New Haven County, through the end of 2021 here.

The big turnout reminded some of the staggering statistics: Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S.; 47,511 Americans died by suicide in 2019 and 1.38 million attempted to take their own lives that same year.

MacInnis completed her community walk alongside her best friend Sam Gontarz on a sunny fall afternoon, and felt an unparalleled sense of gratitude that was previously inaccessible to her.

Days after trying to take her own life, she said, she suddenly saw how much goodness there was in it. ​“I’m grateful for Sam, for my family, to have survived. I’m grateful for everything,” she stated with a big smile on her face.

In her first week of high school back in 2014, MacInnis, who is diagnosed with generalized anxiety, depression, and borderline personality disorder, lost her closest friend to suicide. After that, she was admitted into a partial hospitalization program, where she met Sam as they both attended group therapy for three hours a day, five days a week.

Gontarz, a 19-year-old student at Southern who attempted suicide earlier in high school, was trying to talk MacInnis out of harming herself at the beginning of September after MacInnis started to spiral in response to ongoing intrafamilial tension.

“He was talking me out of it, and I was doing it anyway,” MacInnis recalled. ​“As soon as I finished taking the pills, I was like — wow, that’s not good.”

MacInnis characterized her attempt as a ​“wake-up call” from an endless nightmare of impenetrable self hatred. It also altered the guilt she still felt over her high school friend’s death: she now knew that even those closest to a person couldn’t do anything to stop them once suicidal ideation became a determined reality.

The key to preventing suicide is early intervention, she said. ​“Before I attempted suicide, people didn’t take me seriously. I didn’t do it to die. I did it to show people that it is really serious.”

“Granted, that’s not the way to go about it,” she said, adding that she now suffers from liver damage and other additional health concerns.

MacInnis lives in Meriden. She said Connecticut is a place where kids are expected to be ​“prim and proper,” and it can be difficult to admit that one is suffering from mental health concerns. It’s even harder, she said, to get people to believe you when you do so as a teenager.

(Here are some numbers to call for people who need help: National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1 – 800-273-TALK (8255). Crisis text line: 741741. Clifford Beers’ free emotional support line: 844-TALK-4CT / 844 – 825-5428.)

Sunday’s event shed local light on the direct purpose of community walks. They offer a chance for affected families, friends, and survivors to acknowledge their grief, celebrate life, and pinpoint the forces that propel them to keep going.

For Leroy and Veronica Granger, family is that force. The couple lost their 22-year-old son, Malik, two years ago on July 15, 2019.

This weekend, the Grangers made up the biggest ​“team” of people walking for a deceased loved one. They gathered under a blue tent early in the morning alongside around 50 family members and friends who traveled from their respective homes to collectively remember Malik, support his parents, and champion suicide prevention.

“Family is our therapy,” Veronica Granger said, looking around at her huge support network of individuals pouring one another coffee and eating breakfast muffins in advance of the three-mile walk. ​“They miss him just as much as we do.”

The Grangers said attending the walk woke them up to how many individuals outside their own family are also ​“feeling the same way we were” after losing a loved one.

“The place is so crowded,” Leroy Granger stated. ​“We never knew there were so many.”

The Grangers live in Hamden. Others who came out to hike part of Hamden’s Farmington Canal Greenway hailed from across the state.

Each walking group around them had their own unique story. The Grangers described their son, a Pop Warner and Hamden High football running back and nose guard, as ​“the smallest kid, the toughest kid, with the biggest heart.”

As they watched their grandchildren throw around a football while waiting for the walk to start, they could imagine Malik there with them, ​“laughing and playing with his nephews.”

If Malik hadn’t died two years ago, the family most likely wouldn’t be at Sunday’s walk, or any event related to suicide prevention. ​“We had no knowledge of suicide before this happened,” Leroy Granger said. ​“We weren’t at all aware of this event.”

Their son suffered from depression for years. It was consistently overlooked by medical practitioners because, according to his parents, he was so skilled at putting on a smile and hiding his symptoms.

He started studying at Gateway after high school, then dropped out without telling his parents. His parents knew something was wrong. They got him to go to the hospital to receive care. Because he was over 18, they couldn’t force him to stay there. Soon he convinced hospital staff to let him leave. Weeks later, he was dead.

The Grangers said they knew their son wasn’t well enough to be released, but that their concerns went unheard by doctors, they said. They also suggested that their son went undiagnosed for several possible mental health conditions, such as schizophrenia. The Grangers’ story reflects concerns raised about inequities in a health care system that consistently overlooks and fails to believe Black and Brown patients.

Other families reported feeling blindsided by their loved one’s decision to take their own life.

“I lost my son to suicide in 2018,” Milford resident Maria LaLuna said, eyes brimming with tears. ​“I had no idea that he was struggling.”

Joseph Riddle, a 25-year-old plumber, seemed like a happy and well-adjusted guy to those around him up to his death, according to LaLuna.

“‘Til this day, we don’t know what happened. We keep looking for notes, for signs.”

Three years after the fact, LaLuna and her family are trying to make peace with the fact that they’ll never get clear answers as to why Riddle died the way he did.

One outcome of the tragedy was that LaLuna began attending therapy for the first time in her life. She said she has learned that ​“it’s OK if you’re not OK; there’s no shame, and it’s better to talk about it.”

“If you can tell someone you love them,” she said, ​“do it. You don’t know what they’re going through.”

With her husband’s hand in her hand and their dog and extended family in tow, LaLuna walked up the park’s hill towards the rail trail as Hamden High cheerleaders applauded on the sidelines.

Caleb Warner, who was a close friend of Suzann Kober’s son and has watched multiple friends from Hamden High School commit suicide over the years, led the walk.

Since 2011, 5,522 impacted individuals have come out to walk in Hamden, raising more than $367,000, 80 percent of which will stay in the community and 20 percent of which goes towards national work organized by the AFSP.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” Warner reflected. He pointed out that while this year’s particularly high turnout meant that ​“we’re raising money and raising awareness, it also means everyone here suffers some connection to suicide and mental health issues.”

He and around 50 other volunteers came together under Michelle Peters, AFSP’s Connecticut chapter leader and the sole staff person present at Sunday’s walk, to organize an event that could bring a sense of celebration to the crowd.

Upon registering on site for the event, individuals picked up colored necklaces to representing their experiences with suicide and mental health. Most wore multiple strings of colored beads around their neck, selected from nine hues indicating one’s personal connection to suicide and/or mental illness: White meant the loss of a child, green a personal struggle or attempt, red the loss of a spouse or partner, and so on.

These walks happen annually through in 400 communities across the nation, together acting as one of the biggest sources of funding for AFSP. AFSP supports scientific research related to mental health and advocating for public policies to prevent suicide. Some of their policy priorities include establishing a 988 crisis response system, working towards mental health parity, banning conversion therapy, and training school staff to notice vulnerable youth and connect them with appropriate health services.

Over 20 local businesses donated self-care items for several $1 raffles. Vendors, food trucks, and cheerleaders framed the park where walkers congregated. Organizers read poetry and sang songs like ​“Over the Rainbow” on stage.

Social service organizations lined up around the park’s boundaries. The Alliance for Prevention and Wellness, The Connie J Klanica Foundation, Hamden Youth Services, Change the Script, and Access Health CT insurance representatives hosted tents to provide information and resources to interested and curious attendees.

Kara Sepulveda, a Hamden based health worker with Quinnipiac Valley Health District and Caleb Warner’s co-chair for the event, noted that many people struggled with mental health during the pandemic. Suicide is an extreme outcome of societal stigma around honestly discussing mental well-being.

There is no single road to personal or societal recovery. Those present on Sunday knew that progress, as understood in the lives of individuals, families, and communities, is anything but linear. But amidst the highs and lows, there are inevitable turning points.

Over the next month, Alli MacInnis plans to attend week walks in Bristol, Hartford, and Westport, raising money towards prevention efforts and better education within schools, from K‑12, so that kids don’t have the same experience as hers: ​“Talking about mental health once for 20 minutes in fifth-grade health class.”

Now, MacInnis is returning to her courses in sociology and community engagement at Central Connecticut State University. She had the following words for other youth experiencing similar struggles to herself: ​“I know it sounds cliche, but it really does get better.”