Suicide prevention walk addresses ‘elephant in room’

Photo courtesy of FIU Flickr

By: Anna Radinsky/Assistant News Director

 

Changing how people talk about suicide is one of the missions of Adriana Trespalacios, the organizer of the FIU Out of the Darkness Walk to Fight Suicide event and the daughter of a suicide victim.

“My father died by suicide. We had no idea that he was even depressed or that he struggled with mental illness,” said Trespalacios, the Senior Executive Assistant of the Office of the Dean from Robert Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work.

Trespalacios’s father, Angel Ares, was a man that Trespalacios described as methodological. He was very organized and planned everything down to the minutes.

“If he would have really sat down and thought about what he was doing in his normal self then he wouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t his normal behavior,” Trespalacios said.

By going through family therapy, talking to the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention (AFSP) and attending safe talk trainings, Trespalacios learned that the terminology of how people talk about suicide victims is incorrect.

“Someone who is mentally ill does not commit to make this action. Committing is really knowing exactly what you’re doing,” Trespalacios said. “Someone dies by suicide, like they would die by a heart attack or they die by a tumor or something in the brain or liver. They die by that. They don’t commit to that.”

The first FIU Out of the Darkness Walk was in Nov. 2009 but the event stopped repeating due to the organizer leaving the University, according to Trespalacios.

Over one year after Ares’s death on Dec. 27, 2013, Trespalacios revived the Out of the Darkness walk on March 21, 2015.

By 2017, the walk had over 250 attendees and was able to fundraise over $20,000 due to the help of philanthropic missions from Greek life.

However, due to the suspension of Greek life activities in December 2017 and the suspension of several Greek organizations such as Phi Gamma Delta, commonly known as Fiji, the FIU Out of the Darkness Walk lost fundraising money and participants compared to its previous years, according to Trespalacios.

“At the end of the day it’s not about raising money, even though the money is what gives us the trainings for safe talks and AFSP can come and do seminars for us and hold lectures,” said Trespalacios. “That helps, obviously, but I think from day one it’s always been about participation and raising awareness.”

Trespalacios told Student Media that during every walk someone would talk to her and admit that there has been “a huge white elephant in the room” concerning suicide.

Talking about shared experiences related to suicide is made easier with honors beads, which are different colored necklaces that represent a person’s personal connection to a suicide victim, a personal struggle, supporting someone else’s struggles or supporting suicide prevention.

“If you’re wearing a blue bead and I’m wearing a blue bead, then that’s going to spark a conversation. And that’s really what the walk is about,” said Trespalacios. “It’s just getting people together. It’s not a race. It’s just a leisurely walk around our beautiful campus.”

This year’s walk will be held on Saturday, March 30 at the Graham Ballroom Center Lawn.

Registration will begin at 9 a.m. and the walk will begin at 10 a.m.

To register for the walk, visit afspo.org/FIU.

If you or someone you know may be struggling with suicidal thoughts,

  • Text 741741 to the Crisis Text Line, which provides free, 24/7 and confidential support.
  • Call 305-348-3000 to the University’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) 24/7 hotline. If you are having an emergency after hours, call the line and press 1 to speak with a counselor.

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