Survivors of suicide speak out about mental illness

FLORENCE — Gracelyn Duffee Elmendorf listens to what mental health officials have to say about depression and suicide.

But what they say about the subject is nothing compared with living through it, she said.

Elmendorf’s first husband and their son both committed suicide. They were predeceased by her husband’s grandfather, who also took his own life.

“If they haven’t been through it, it’s fiction,” Elmendorf said. “You have to go through this to really understand all the dynamics involved.”

Elmendorf has set out on a mission to educate others and prevent other tragedies like hers from coming to pass.

And she isn’t alone in her quest.

Scranton resident Debbie Atkinson Lee said her husband, 41-year-old Charles Atkinson Jr., also took his own life.

Both Atkinson and Skipper Duffee, who was 47 at the time of his death, are a part of an increasing number of people, young and old, who commit suicide.

Someone doesn’t take his or her life for just one reason, Lee said. It’s a combination of such issues as chemical makeup and the person’s environment.

All these circumstances play a part in a suicidal person’s demise, Lee said.

“It’s not that last drop that makes the glass overflow,” Elmendorf said. “It’s every drop that makes the glass overflow.”

Before he died 10 years ago, Skipper Duffee was the CEO of a large company that was the subject of a lawsuit, Elmendorf said.

Elmendorf said her husband demanded only the best from himself. She said she thinks her husband’s fear of failure is what drove him to his death.

“He sold himself on the idea that he was worth more dead than alive,” she said.

The signs can be covert or overt, as they were in the case of Atkinson, who Lee said was exhibiting abnormal behavior before his death.

After his death, she discovered he’d been diagnosed with Dysthymia depression, a moderate form of the illness.

“As a survivor, I was trying to understand what happened,” Lee said. “I was trying to make sense of things. We were a happy family.”

Not all depressed people are suicidal, Elmendorf said, but all suicidal people are depressed.

The loss of hope is a common factor in all suicide cases. Seventy-five percent of those contemplating suicide will give some sort of sign beforehand, Elmendorf said.

When someone commits suicide, the people they love are left with mixed feelings, Elmendorf said.

“The very person that you love is the very person you have anger towards. You have these two diametrically opposed emotions,” she said.

Still, Elmendorf said, she feels the suicidal person doesn’t want to die — just escape the pain.

Elmendorf said she feels her late husband is responsible for their 21-year-old son Robert’s death seven years ago.

“When parents contemplate suicide, they do not understand that it takes something that’s unthinkable and they put it in the do-able realm,” she said. “My husband unknowingly gave my son permission to do that.”

Because her son was so young when he died, Elmendorf said she has taken a special interest in talking with high school and college students about suicide.  She goes into schools and gives a talk called “17 Minutes of Hope.” It includes telling listeners about a type of emotional CPR known as “QPR,” which stands for Question, Persuade and Refer.

It’s especially important for teachers and students to know about QPR so they can help the person receive counseling and treatment from the proper authorities, Elmendorf said

Clarendon County School District 3, where Lee is a teacher, has adopted the one-hour QPR gatekeeper training for the faculty and community members.

For years, people didn’t talk about suicide in schools because of the fear it would give someone the idea to take his or her own life, but that’s a myth, Elmendorf said.

“People think suicide is a dirty word,” Lee said.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death for people between the ages of 15 and 24 and the second leading cause of death among college-age people, Elmendorf said.

For details about mental illness, call the Mental Health network at (843) 661-5407.

The network also has a support group called SOS, or Survivors of Suicide, for those who have lost someone through suicide. For details about the group, e-mail Lee at .