Manchester Women Raise Money for Suicide Prevention, Seek Sponsors

Local women Becca Maus (on the left) and Megan Linski (on the right) are preparing to fight suicide, and honor local victims.

 Editor’s Note: Last June, Manchester High School graduate Krisen Lison took her own life. (Krisen's Memorial, Krisen's Books). Her friends Becca Maus and Megan Linski have decided to honor her by raising money for The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Both women will be walking in an all-night, Out of the Darkness walk, and are seeking sponsors to raise money for their cause:

Megan's donor page

Becca's donor page

Megan is an aspiring writer, and The Mirror asked her to pen a short essay describing this mission that she is on. This is her essay:

Do you believe friendship can move mountains?

By Megan Linski

Krisen and I were close throughout our teenage years. We were both writers, she a poet and I a novelist, and we loved animals, dressing up, having adventures, and each other. We graduated together in 2011 from Manchester High School. She was an honor student at Michigan State, and I was going to Washtenaw Community College at the time when she ended her life last June.

Her loss wasn’t just devastating to me, but to everyone that knew her. To have anyone die by suicide is tragic. When it happens to someone so young, and so beautiful, it can make you lost.

I was lost for a very long time after Krisen died. When I heard about the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention soon after, however, I wanted to investigate. As I poked around their website, I noticed something called the Out of the Darkness Overnight Walk. Once I gathered enough information, it took only seconds to make a decision. I had to participate.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) is America’s leading foundation when it comes to fighting suicide. They are a non-profit organization that fights suicide by educating the public about mental disorders, funding scientific research, promoting legislation, giving resources to people at-risk for suicide, and running grief programs for suicide survivors. The statistics they give on suicide are staggering. Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the United States. A suicide is committed in the US every 13.7 minutes, 20% alone by veterans. In Michigan, the death rate by suicide is 12.8%. The costs of suicide are substantial; suicide deaths cost the US $34 billion dollars each year. Manchester suffers from suicide like everywhere else in America, with two more of its residents dying by suicide since Krisen’s death last June.

There are many Out of the Darkness Community and Campus walks in the Michigan area. However, AFSP’s biggest event is the Out of the Darkness Overnight, an 18 mile, eight hour walk from sunset to sunrise in the name of suicide prevention. The Overnight takes place in Philadelphia and Seattle this year. I am participating in the Philadelphia event, and will walk past the Liberty Bell, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and many other landmarks until I reach the finish line at dawn to a luminara ceremony in honor of all those lost to suicide. Krisen’s name will be among those names. Every step I take will be towards making sure that no one else has to lose a child, a parent, or a friend. All of the donations will be put towards suicide prevention programs for high schools and colleges, research for mental illnesses, and training AFSP advocates (of which I have become) to inform our government of mental health policies in our nation. My fundraising goal is $700.

I won’t be making this journey alone. My friend and former Manchester resident, Becca Maus, is also walking with me. Her personal mission is to end the stigma that follows suicide; that people who suffer from mental illnesses are delusional, selfish and cowardly.

The prevalent question that follows suicides is always, “Why?” What people fail to understand is that in many cases there are not exact reasons for suicide, but rather biology fighting against the patient. Studies have shown that 90% of people who commit suicide have a diagnosable mental illness at the time of their death. When you’re fighting depression, everyday is a struggle. Depending on how severe the depression is, getting out of bed and feeding yourself can feel like running a marathon. The decision to keep living becomes less of a choice the more trapped victims of depression feel. Eventually, suicide seems like the only rational solution, one victims believe will give better lives to their friends and family members. That’s where the AFSP comes in; they reach out to people suffering from suicidal thoughts, and help them find treatment so they can get back to living their lives.

Mental illness isn’t something to be ashamed of. The public attitude and hush-hush behavior towards suicide prevents those who need help from getting treatment. In our modern era, in 2014, it is saddening that the public consider those who suffer from depression and other mental illnesses to be weak. This thinking won’t end with the passage of time, only with action. Somebody has to do the work to end the stigma, and end the statistics. Maybe the end can begin with me.

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by Fritz Swanson

Fritz Swanson has written for The Believer, the Christian Science Monitor, Print Magazine, McSweeney's, Esopus, LSA Magazine, and The Mid-American Review. He serves as a trustee on the Manchester District Library Board. He's the designer and publisher of The Manchester Mirror.

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