Student who lost father to suicide during pandemic wants to help others

When medical student Tripp Owen participated in the Out of the Darkness suicide prevention walk in North Charleston’s Riverfront Park, memories of his father were never far from his mind.

“I have a pretty tight personal connection with suicide because I lost my dad,” Owen said. 

“I think the onset of COVID and a lot of social isolation and just the stress of life and work and everything else added up. We lost him on Mother's Day in 2020.”

Owen, a student at the Medical University of South Carolina, got counseling to help in the aftermath. Talking is important, he said.

 

“I just want to start the conversation about it, because I know when I was growing up, ‘suicide’ was such a taboo word. It was, like, almost like a curse word. I'm not expecting to change the world or anything, but if I can reach some people and offer myself as a resource and/or share resources that I know about, I think would make a great deal of a difference.”

Those conversations are part of the reason for the suicide prevention walk. Regina Creech, a business health liaison for MUSC Health, serves as chair for the annual event. “To have 600 people there was just moving. Very moving.”

Creech said suicide is a leading cause of death in South Carolina and the United States. It can be isolating for people who have lost loved ones. The walk is one way to bring them together.

 

“One of the big things that we really liked is that people can come to the event or get connected with others who've been impacted by suicide, and they can see these individuals in this crowd and know that they're not alone. There are other folks like them in the community that they can connect with, create a bond with and lean on for support.”

 

MUSC had a big contingent at the event. Meg Wallace, a social worker with MUSC and associate director for Clinical Operations at the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center, was one of the walk’s top fundraisers. 

The event is organized by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Creech said. “The AFSP's mission is to save lives and bring hope to those affected by suicide. We fund research to improve interventions, train clinicians in suicide prevention and advocate for policy that will save lives.”

The Charleston walk has raised about $52,000 so far toward a goal of $60,000. Fundraising continues through the end of the year.

The foundation has also set a goal of reducing the annual suicide rate in the U.S. by 20% by the year 2025. “Suicide is preventable. People think perhaps this is just something that happens, but it's preventable. And so we stress that people need to connect to care. There's the 9-8-8 hotline now, the crisis hotline that you can call to get connected to someone on the other end of the line if you're in crisis. But it’s important to connect to people and talk about it,” Creech said.

Owen agreed. “I can't view myself as the answer to everybody's struggles, but I think most things happen for a reason. I’d like to just to make some sort of a difference. I feel like, as a young person in the world, it's very hard to envision yourself doing that. But suicide is an epidemic, and we have to talk about it.”