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TIM HARMON column: Bridge to life Suicide-try survivor brings his message of hope to city

Journal Gazette - 6/21/2018

Since its opening in 1937, more than 2,000 people have jumped off San Francisco'sGolden Gate Bridge. Kevin Hines is one of just 37 people known to have survived.

Hines was 19 years old when he catapulted over the side, plagued by voices and hallucinations, convinced that no one cared. But the moment his hands left the guardrail, he had the same reaction other survivors said they experienced: "instant regret ... I remember thinking, no one's going to know that I didn't want to die," he said in a 2015 video interview with BuzzFeed.

When Hines went into the water, he shattered several vertebrae and suffered other internal injuries but somehow remained conscious and struggled back to the surface. He was rescued by a U.S. Coast Guard boat.

Now 37, Hines has used his second chance at life to raise awareness about mental illness and suicide and to encourage those contemplating self-destruction and those close to them to ask for help, speaking to audiences around the world. Last week, he brought his message to Fort Wayne.

Hines' appearance at the fourth annual Indiana Suicide Prevention Conference at the Mirro Center was planned before the losses this month of celebrities Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain to suicide. Thursday evening, about 200 mental health and emergency-services professionals from around the state watched Hines' film, "Suicide: The Ripple Effect," and spoke with him via Skype. He joined the conference in person Friday.

Hines offered his views on particularly vulnerable groups such as youths, the LGBT community and veterans. When a questioner asked him how to encourage interaction between parents and young people on suicide prevention, Hines said that whenever he speaks at schools, "I have at least one child come up to me and say, 'I have this disease, but my mom and dad don't believe it's real.'

"That happens everywhere I've gone," he said. "If we could accept that these thoughts can be in any of our children and not be in denial of it, we can save their lives.

"Help them understand that just because they are thinking of suicide, it doesn't mean that their thoughts have to become their actions," Hines said. "I wish I knew that when I found myself on that bridge."

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that 45,000 Americans died by suicide in 2016, twice the number of deaths by homicide. Suicide rates have skyrocketed since 1999, the centers reported, and Indiana's increase - almost 32 percent - has been among the highest.

At a meeting earlier Thursday at the Lutheran Foundation, local leaders learned the problem is even more acute here. Fort Wayne-Allen County Health Commissioner Dr. Deborah McMahan said suicides here have increased by 50 percent in the last four years - from 50 in 2014 to 75 in 2017, and 15 of last year's victims were age 25 or younger.

"This is not a good trajectory," said McMahan, who sees the increase as part of the growing problem of "deaths by despair" that also include accidental substance-abuse deaths and deaths from alcohol-related liver disease and cirrhosis.

Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for young people, reported Tammy Toscos, a research scientist at Parkview Research Center. Data from 2015 showed Indiana had the second-highest percentage of students who said they had made a suicide plan and the third-highest percentage of students who had seriously considered attempting suicide.

From school systems and colleges in northeast Indiana, "we found that we had about 33 percent of youth who were feeling so sad or hopeless every day that they can't do their everyday activities - a third of our young people - and that roughly 15 percent of high school students and 9 percent of college-age students had considered attempting suicide in the last year," Toscos said.

Among solutions the group suggested were better communications, working to relieve the stigma about mental illness that prevents many from seeking help, and contacting legislators to demand that the state commit more resources to fighting mental illness and preventing suicides.

"In Indiana, 71 percent of youth who have depression are not getting any type of mental health care treatment," Toscos said. "That's a real concern for me, being in a health system - how do we help get access to that?"

Speaking to the state conference later that day, Hines echoed many of the same concerns. But he stressed remaining positive, urging relatives to remember the good moments in the lives of those lost to suicide and reiterating that those who survive attempts can recover and go on to lead productive lives, as he has. He told a story that should offer hope to those here who despair of persuading the public to take the suicide-prevention issue seriously.

After the film "The Bridge" was released in 2006, Hines said, he and his father were among those who fought to persuade the Golden Gate board of supervisors to install a net on both sides of the bridge to deter jumpers. "We went from 16-0 against us, and in 10 years, 16-0 for us," he said. The $200 million project began last year.

"As of June 2021, not one more beautiful, gorgeous soul will be lost on the Golden Gate Bridge," Hines said. "It will become a beacon of suicide prevention all around the world."

Need help?

Information and help on suicide as well as a range of mental-health and drug-related issues are available through the LookUpIndiana.org website sponsored by the Lutheran Foundation.

To chat with someone, text LOOKUP to 494949. For immediate help call 800-284-8439.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 800-273-TALK (8255). Crisis text line is HELLO to 741741.