Events bring suicide awareness out of the darkness

Meg Wallace isn’t afraid to ask questions that may make people squirm if she thinks she needs to. “I say, ‘I’m really worried about you. Are you having thoughts of hurting yourself? I don’t want you to get hurt.’”

Wallace helps trauma survivors at the Medical University of South Carolina’s National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center. She wants to do everything she can to keep her patients from doing what a friend did in college: committing suicide. 

So if Wallace is worried about someone, whether it’s a trauma survivor in her clinic or even a friend or a family member, she speaks up. “I’d rather you be uncomfortable now than to not have asked and for you to have needed me to ask you that day.”

On October 16, Wallace will join people from across the Lowcountry for the Out of the Darkness Charleston area walk, an event aimed at bringing the subject of suicide into the light. It will raise money for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, which aims to reduce the suicide rate by 20 percent over the next nine years. 

But it’s much more than a walk. Things will get very personal, with speakers describing their own experiences with suicide or suicidal thoughts, a poetry reading and a time to remember people who have died. 

Event organizer Regina Creech, who’s also the injury prevention coordinator at MUSC Health, said the walk comes at a time when efforts are underway to train people across the Lowcountry in suicide prevention. “We’d like to start offering prevention trainings to local schools, churches and businesses in the near future,” Creech said.

The state Department of Mental Health is doing its part. It recently received a grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to support the Young Lives Matter Project, which has the goal of reducing suicide among people ages 10 to 24 by 20 percent by 2025. 

Creech said suicide is the leading cause of death among 10- to 14-year-olds in South Carolina, based on the latest available data. It’s the third leading cause of death for 15- to 24-year-olds. “We have to do something about this,” she said.

Suicide is a problem for older adults too. People 35 and older are also more likely to kill themselves than be killed by someone else.

The subject of suicide will be touched on this Friday at MUSC during a screening of the movie “Touched With Fire.” The Spike Lee film is about bipolar disorder, a condition that can put people at risk for suicide if left untreated. 

“Suicide and mental health conditions affect millions of Americans,” Creech said.

Wallace knows that all too well.

“In 2011, that June the 30th, I was coming home from work and I got a call,” Wallace said. “I was not expecting it. It was 10:30 or 11 at night, and they told me Kiki had died. I actually pulled over on the side of the road to process the information. I was like, well something happened.” 

Kiki Hannapel was a 20-year-old College of Charleston student known for her generally happy outlook and love of the outdoors. So Wallace assumed there had been an accident. “I’d never have thought anything related to suicide.”

There was no note - only a text to a boyfriend who’d split with her that morning: “Goodbye. Maybe forever.”

“She didn’t show any outward symptoms, outward expressions,” Wallace said. “She was the happiest person you probably know. It was an emotional response to some stuff going on that morning. She responded in that moment and that emotion, and then, unfortunately, she completed suicide.”

Wallace said Hannapel’s death helped nudge her in a direction she was already considering: mental health. She wanted to understand why a young woman with so much going for her would take her own life. So Wallace shifted from pre-med to psychology, and went on to earn a master’s degree in social work. Today, she’s a program coordinator and project therapist at the National Crime Victims Center in the MUSC Health Institute of Psychiatry.

“I work with all types of trauma,” Wallace said. “I work with survivors of suicide, I work with survivors of homicide, family members who lost someone to homicide. I work with people who have suffered physical abuse, sexual abuse, that whole gamut,” she said.

When it comes to people who have attempted suicide or are having suicidal thoughts, Wallace helps them come up with a safety plan, including a person they can call in a crisis.

About four percent of adults in the U.S. reported having suicidal thoughts during the past year in a recent survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some, like Wallace’s patients, get help. She reminds them that they’re not alone.

“It’s not uncommon for people on any given day to have a thought of, ‘It would be easier if I just wasn’t here.’ And I think that talking with them about that is so important. When they feel like they can’t reach out if they have these thoughts because they think someone’s going to judge them, that’s when it builds.”

Some people give clear indications that they are considering ending their lives, telling friends or family that they want to die or writing suicide notes. Other warning signs are more subtle.

Wallace said it’s important to pay attention. “If you know that something has happened recently like a trauma or a trigger, or someone they know was lost by suicide. We see higher rates in people who have lost someone to suicide. Recognize if something has changed. 

“It doesn’t mean you walk up to them if they’re acting a little weird and you’re like, ‘Are you thinking that you’re going to hurt yourself?’ But I think in the context of a conversation, if they’re talking about feeling really down or nothing’s working out. Listen for those key words: ‘Everything’s wrong. I’m worthless. Things are hopeless.’”

Wallace said counseling can help, and so can calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. At MUSC Health, she tries to give her patients the tools to survive. “Most of the time with suicide, they feel completely helpless. And what we’re trying to do is give them a stepping stone to get out of that.”

But sometimes, it’s not obvious that someone is suicidal. As Wallace said, nobody saw Hannapel’s death coming. That’s why conversations surrounding events such as the Out of the Darkness Walk are important. They make talking about suicide prevention normal, not something to avoid. That might let someone who’s having a really bad morning know that it’s OK to reach out for help and that better days lie ahead.

Wallace isn’t sure what she could have done to help Hannapel, but she wishes she’d known what her friend was going through. “Kiki was a very emotional person in the sense that she was 100 percent in, all the time. She was just an amazing person,” Wallace said.

She still checks in with Hannapel’s parents and got their blessing before talking about her for this story.

“The Out of Darkness Walk serves as a reminder of how Kiki had this amazing light about her. I think this is a way I maintain that connection. I can share her story and my story and how it impacted me, so I think it’s a connection for me.”