My Son Died by Suicide, the Forgotten Epidemic

By Julia L. Wilkinson

On April 19, 2021, my 22-year old son, Kyle, checked into a Red Roof Inn, consumed some sodium nitrite, and ended his life.

You might say he “committed” suicide, and he did kill himself intentionally, but I would say he died from depression. (These days the verb “committed” is not the preferred terminology for suicide; I think it’s obvious why, but just in case, it’s because “committed” is associated with a crime. And In my view it should not be a crime for someone to end their unbearable suffering).

Sadly, he is one of many who chose to check out early this year. And last year. And every year on record. In these strange days of the  pandemic, unlike anything I’ve known in my 57-year lifetime, we have heard endlessly about COVID-19. I get that. 

But, suicide is the second leading cause of death for young people aged 10 - 34.  (The first is accidents). 

The second leading cause of death. It bears repeating.  And yet, we the people still can’t seem to talk about it other than in hushed whispers.  It’s still stigmatized. In 2023. 

While I obviously can’t know all the reasons people choose to end their lives, I do know depression is a leading cause. I know firsthand the misery of clinical depression — yes, it’s a disease, and it really needs a new name, because the word “depression” connotes more of just a bad day. 

A Stanford professor, Dr. Sapolsky, says in a YouTube lecture that depression “is the worst disease,” because people in it don’t know if or when it will end. At least people with treatable diseases, even serious ones, know they can still do fun things in life after their course of treatment.

But it’s really a living Hell. I’m surprised myself I was able to tolerate it for so long. I still am stalked by its shadow daily. So I knew some of what my dear son went through, but I will never know exactly his own special kind of purgatory. 

I’ve accepted he’s gone. But what makes me angry is both that newer, more effective treatments were not suggested to us… I had to discover these on my own. 

And not enough is being done to address this horrible epidemic. 

Could Kyle have been saved?

Kyle had artistic and musical talent, was handsome, smart and athletic. Yes, I’m biased, of course, as his mother; but that was what many people said about him.

But early on there were signs something was amiss. In third grade, his teachers were frustrated that he couldn’t follow any more than two-step directions. I met with his main teacher, the reading specialist, and the gifted and talented teacher. It seemed clear they thought he needed something like adhd medicine. 

So we went the Ritalin route. Kyle woke up too early in the mornings. He was buzzy. He couldn’t eat lunch. Finally, he himself put his foot down and refused to take the med. I agreed. 

The Ritalin experiment, short-lived as it was, did seem to improve his grades. Kyle was admitted into the local “gifted and talented” elementary school. At this time I noticed he didn’t socialize the way most other boys his age did. 

One night I got into bed and opened the book I was reading. Tucked inside was a handwritten letter from Kyle.

It read, and this is from memory, “Hi, Mommy and Daddy! I just wanted to tell you I think I am bi/gay.” He went on not to say much but that his main concern was we wouldn’t believe him. (And I understand why — He was about 12 at the time and it took a while for us to realize he really knew he was gay / gender dysmorphic). 

So early on he was grappling with some big life issues. 

This struggle with who he was, figuring out what he wanted to do with his life, and sinking into clinical depression really got serious shortly after Kyle made a Facebook post about how he and a female friend of his (a pretty, popular girl who was straight) were recruiting for the gay/straight student alliance, a club at that high school at that time.

Immediately almost all of Kyle’s peer group dropped him as a friend, bullied him, and made his high school experience largely a nightmare. 

One evening that autumn of his freshman year, I was downstairs when I heard his voice at the top of the stairs.

“Mom,” he said, in a worried voice,  “I.. I spilled some chemicals.” 

“Was it the bathroom cleaner?” I yelled up. 

That must be the last thing I said before Kyle’s whole downward spiral into depression and suicide attempts began. Eight long years ago.  

He said he was as planning to drink some cleaning chemicals to kill himself.  Of course I was panicking. 

But…I told myself he would be helped by antidepressant medication, the way I’d been during a bad episode after my dad died. Paxil finally worked for me then, but since then I’ve had the “poop out”  that SSRI’s sometimes have. 

I made an appointment for Kyle to see a psychiatrist right away; one of many he would have over the years.  I’ll call him Dr. W.  I sat in on that appointment, and what I heard was even more disturbing - Dr. W. asked Kyle some questions, and the one that stands out is him finally asking, “Do you… do you *want* to live?”

I looked over at Kyle. “I’m trying to find *reasons* to live,” he said, a hint of hopefulness in his voice — or did I just want to see it that way?

Kyle became withdrawn, saying little about how he felt.

We were on a long road that would go on for seven years, from Fall 2014 until Spring of 2021. He tried many medicines. Prozac. Effexor. Remeron. Seroquel.  Other meds I can’t even recall. 

In-patient hospitalizations. Out-patient programs. Every time he’d be released, his father and I would try to believe he was a little bit better. 

— 

But.. the downward spiral continued. Nooses were found… in his closet, in the family room.. one time I walked out to the screen porch to have breakfast and I saw a toppled-over bar stool beneath a noose. These shocking sights became sadly regular. 

He also stalked the Woodrow Wilson Bridge several times. I remember around New Year’s Day 2017, in the early morning hours, he was found walking around on it. Someone had called the police, and he was taken to the hospital again. 

His final trip to the Bridge was his last. It almost killed him, but not quite. He was drinking a bottle of vodka and holding a rope.. his caseworker (he’d been sucked into the criminal justice system after stealing our car for one of his suicide missions) said that had he gone unnoticed much longer, he would have fallen onto the rocks below.

I became desperate to find solutions. I even sprang around $500 a pop for three ketamine infusions. I’d heard it was a lifesaver for some severely depressed people.

I even thought about magic mushrooms.. to this day I’ll never know if they would have helped him. They’re still illegal here in Virginia, and I didn’t want to wear an orange jumpsuit, much as I wanted to help him. 

Other things I wish I had tried for him: transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and ECT.  ECT had saved a friend’s life, and later, tms, I believe, saved my life. (Don’t get me started on how I believe ECT’s main association is still the old movie “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”). 

Also, I noted that not one psychiatrist ever mentioned trying ECT or TMS to either me or Kyle; I had to find out about those online my own. 

But nothing we tried for him worked. I began to think of it as something that may never be solved.. even though I knew in my heart he had wonderful talents -- he’d designed two logos for different organizations that looked professional, for example.  He made a lot of art. He created digital music and played guitar. But none of my advice or urgings on potential careers that might suit him went anywhere. 

He decided to try to do a trade, which could have been great, but he was too depressed to work well. He was fired from a series of menial jobs. 

As the end neared, I texted him out of frustration — “Is your life really so bad?”

He replied quickly. “It’s not that it’s so bad.  It’s just… unacceptable.”

Unacceptable. I understood that. He was lonely and hadn’t found love. He was fired from menial jobs again and again. He hated living at home. Most of his friends had gone off to college or moved.. and Covid and its isolation didn’t help. 

But Covid did not cause his death.

No way. 

It was suicide. The second leading cause of death for young people. Still. In 2023. 

End