A haze enveloped Warrensburg Saturday. The air was unseasonably cool, the sky was overcast and the clouds released an inconsistent but somehow constant drizzle.
Despite the elements, many people came to the UCM campus for the Out of the Darkness Community Walk.
The walks, organized by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, are aimed at raising awareness of suicide, its effects on communities and its causes as well as raising money to fund research and prevention programs, according to the AFSP Out of the Darkness Community Walks website.
Barb Mares, chairperson of the Greater Kansas Chapter of the AFSP, said a goal of the organization is to decrease the annual suicide rate by 20 percent by 2025.
Many who participated in the walk Saturday did so in remembrance of a friend or family member.
Master Sgt. Chad Imes was in the United States Air Force for 19 years and was stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base. He was married and had three children. He died July 23, 2017.
Felicia Adams, Imes’ sister, said their family came to celebrate and remember him and to help raise awareness of how suicide affects families.
“For a long time, mental health has been a stigma,” she said. “It’s important to reach out to people. It’s important to reach out to your friends and family. We all struggle with our own issues, demons if you will, and it’s important to stand together as a community, as a family, as friends, making sure that we’re checking on each other, (and) support (each other) when it does happen.”
Latoshia Imes, his wife, said men and women in the military particularly need more support. She said seeking help for mental health issues oftentimes can interfere with a military member’s career and so they opt to keep it hidden.
“They don’t want to say anything,” she said. “You don’t want to lose your job. You don’t want to lose what you’ve worked 19 years for. There needs to be more support there.”
Some people participated in the walk because they had previously made an attempt on their own life and wanted to share that experience with people who may be in similar situations.
Katie Randolph, who was volunteering with AFSP, said she attempted suicide when she was in college because she felt isolated and at that time she didn’t know depression was a treatable disease. She said after her attempt, she was forced to get help and learned about her illness that way.
She said she encourages people now to reach out for help if they need it.
“Talk to friends,” Randolph said. “Talk to pastors. Talk to counselors. Talk to a school teacher, talk to your parents, talk to whoever you are comfortable talking to. But get it out.”
She said it is also important to be available for people who are having issues.
“If you have a loved one who struggles, just listen to them,” she said. “Don’t judge them. Don’t try to fix them. Just support them unconditionally.”
Brad Nottingham, dressed as Batman, and Erin Thomas, dressed as Wonder Woman, were at the walk representing the Just_us League, a group that supports charitable events in the area. They said this event was particularly important because it has affected members of their group.
“I know that we’ve had one member, she’s tried to take her life in the past,” Thomas said. “She’s in a better place now, but she still deals with it daily.”
She said other members have dealt with depression and she has personally dealt with anxiety, so it’s important to support efforts such as Out of the Darkness.
“People don’t give it enough voice,” she said. “They think it’s something you shouldn’t talk about.”
Nottingham said mental health issues can generally be overlooked by many, and they shouldn’t be.
“It’s something we take seriously,” he said. “We take a lot of things seriously, but this is one of the most important things to us. I think it’s important to us because it affects children. It affects all lives, but we aim for children and the younger group.”
Thomas said reaching kids as superheroes is a powerful message she hopes will help kids not believe what they’re feeling is wrong.
“Especially for kids, when they see superheroes supporting something, in their mind we’re real,” Thomas said. “So, they’re like, ‘Oh, Wonder Woman understands this, so there must not be something wrong with me.’”
Ultimately, the Out of the Darkness walks held in communities across the nation are meant to provide people with the resources and training they need to not only offer support for people have been effected by suicide, but to help prevent it in the first place.
Mares said she is driven in part by how those resources may have affected her personally.
“I have lost my 16-year-old son Jason to suicide in 2003,” she said. “There wasn’t any sign that we saw at home. There were signs that he was changing in school, but it wasn’t until after his death that students were coming up to me and telling me that they noticed this drastic change in him. Those are warning signs.
“But, being that they were uneducated, the teachers were uneducated, nobody called me or made me aware. I feel that if educational materials were in the school, maybe I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
It wasn’t only Jason who may have been helped with the availability of training and resources.
“My son Justin, who’s 18, he was away at school,” Mares said. “He came home after (Jason’s) passing. Six months and three weeks later he took his life. Not once, but twice within seven months my sons and myself had to endure going through another loss.”
She said this has become her passion, and she is driven to reduce the burden suicide has on communities.
“We all are volunteers, so I call it my non-paid full-time job,” she said. “But I get rewarded in so many other ways. And I know in my heart we’re saving lives.”
There is help available to anyone struggling; call the 24-hour National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or text “Talk” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
Locally, the UCM Counseling Center is available at 660-543-4060 or Public Safety can be reached 24 hours a day at 660-543-4123
If there is an immediate danger of a suicide attempt, call 911.
