A friend’s brother died by suicide last week. There are many resources online about how to avoid a mental health tragedy, but after losing my sister to major depression and suicide nearly twenty years ago, I’ve never come across a resource on how to navigate life after such a tragedy. And with estimates suggesting 1 in 5 people are suffering from a mental illness at any given point in time, and 1 in 20 suffering for a major mental illness (bipolar, schizophrenia, etc.), that means nearly all of us will either be directly or indirectly affected in one way or another by the tragic nature of mental illness. So at the request of another family member, I’ve decided to record what I often tell people that find themselves in this tragic and familiar situation.

Here are some of the resources and citations for some of the data I point to and links for more information:

https://www.nami.org/nami/media/nami-media/infographics/generalmhfacts.pdf

https://afsp.org/story/if-someone-tells-you-they-re-thinking-about-suicide-a-realconvo-guide-from-afsp/

https://twitter.com/jamesbeshara/status/1606051266680934402?s=20&t=K8zXPfi-_x_9MeigUooBRQ