A sold-out audience of 160 guests filled the dining room at Grand Harbor Club last Friday for an inaugural luncheon featuring keynote speaker Tanya Brown, to benefit Suncoast Mental Health Center. Brown, the youngest sister of Nicole Brown Simpson, authored the book, Finding Peace Amid the Chaos: My Escape from Depression and Suicide.
It was a fitting topic for Suncoast, which was founded in 1998 to provide counseling, assessment and supportive mental health services to children and their families in the four counties of the Treasure Coast.
Art Ciasca, Suncoast CEO, cited alarming statistics that highlight the need for better access to mental health counseling. There were more than 38,000 suicide deaths last year; more than 1,100 of them occurring on college campuses, and more than 25 in Indian River County. Roughly 11 young people under age 24 commit suicide every day.
“It is vital that people who need assistance receive it,” said Ciasca. “Suicide is not a harmless call for attention, but rather it is a sign of extreme stress, and is most often the result of untreated or undertreated mental health issues. We want people to know that mental illness is a very real medical condition, like cancer or diabetes.”
In introducing Brown, Ciasca said that while her story was one of depression and tragedy, it was also about recovery.
Although her depression began in childhood, Brown said her first thought of suicide occurred when she was in college. She was told by her sister Nicole to write down a quote that had helped her: “Delete the need to understand. We don’t need to understand everything. Some things just are.”
Not too long after that conversation her sister was brutally murdered and the lives of their entire family were changed forever. Brown said she continually internalized her feelings, adding, “Unresolved pain catches up with you in a big way.” She began abusing prescription pills, which made her feel good but did nothing to release the anger and issues bottled up inside.
Finally, at a family gathering, she “flipped out. Everything that I had stuffed down, my entire life, exploded in a matter of seconds,” said Brown. After lashing out at everyone in the family she went to her room and contemplated overdosing on pills. “People who think about suicide, or commit the final act, don’t want to die. It’s a desperate call for help,” said Brown. The treatment she received turned her life around.
“We are in this thing called life together. We don’t have to battle through this thing on our own,” said Brown. “Reach out for help. There is hope, there is healing there is help for everybody if we just ask for it.”
The event’s Honorary Chair was Ann Zugelter, a tireless mental health advocate, who shared a video and spoke tenderly about her son Ted, who struggled for years with a severe form of schizophrenia, before eventually succumbing to the disease.
“We share a mission, to stamp out the stigma of mental illness, and to make help available for a biological disease that is so difficult to understand,” said Zugelter, stressing the importance of the type of early intervention provided by Suncoast for children and adolescents suffering with the disease.
For more information, visit www.suncoastmentalhealth.org.
