Scotoma, noun, is a spot in the visual field in which vision is absent or deficient, according to Merriam Webster dictionary online. Jeff Edwards, however, described it simply as a blind spot. At his presentation Wednesday afternoon during Seminar, he pulled up multiple pictures of a young teen. “What is it you can’t see?” He asked freshmen gathered in the CPA. “You can’t see behind the scenes, what’s happening back here.” He moved behind the screen which displayed Chase Michael, 12. Victim of Depression and Suicide Mon, 3/03/2003. “Does he look like a suicidal kid?”
Many of the students gathered stayed silent, while a few no’s were mumbled. “One more scotoma that pertains to me,” Edwards continued. “When you look at me, what do you see? What do you notice? What don’t you notice, what don’t you see?” He looked around the theater. “I’m a dad with a broken heart. Chase left a hole inside of me for nearly 12 years.”
Edwards, Chairman of the Board of Directors for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, spends a lot of time visiting various schools across Michigan and the USA, along with a few in Canada. He brings with him a message of hope and compassion, and raises awareness for people so they don’t end up like him. He started going to schools in 2004, visited hundreds of schools and talked to thousands of kids, and has since received various awards. He doesn’t do it for recognition, though, but to prevent other families from needlessly enduring what he went through.
He took it to another level and met with his congressman. A law was passed called Michigan’s Chase Edwards Youth Depression and Suicide Education law. It encouraged schools to teach about warning signs and dangers in an age appropriate fashion at primary and secondary school levels. They could not mandate curriculum to include it, only encourage schools systems to include it. “All too often schools cherry pick it,” Edwards explained.” “They’ll talk about bullying, and drugs, and alcohol, and sex ed, and nutrition, and they sort of accidentally-on-purpose not ever get around to getting the time to talk about it because ‘well we don’t have anybody qualified, we really don’t have any funding to do that, really stretched for time now, but.’ Every excuse rather than just admitting the fact that they’re just a little chicken about doing it.”
“You should be encouraged that your school is courageous enough to have somebody like me come in to talk about this stuff because there’s still a lot of schools that don’t.” Edwards remarked.
Mickaila Yeomans, a freshman at MHS, said that she was moved by what she heard and saw. She, along with her brother, both have depression and suicidal thoughts. After talking about her brother’s suicide attempt, she confessed: “I didn’t know what to do, so then I tried. I do go to counseling, but it makes me think more about it. I talk more to my brother about it than anyone.”
“I’m an emotional person, and I didn’t think it would be his son,” Yeomans said. “Now I know how my dad would feel if I did it, or my brother did it, or if anyone did it.”
Other students weren’t expecting it either. “I was shocked when he revealed it was his son,” Freshman Tommy Cook said.
Among other information about mental illness, Edwards showed a list of symptoms of depression, telling the students that if someone had five or more of them, that he/she would be diagnosed with it.
At the end of his presentation, hand-sized magnets were passed out to all the students. On these magnets read as following:
“WARNING SIGNS FOR DEPRESSION AND SUICIDE
- Feeling sad
- Change in appetite
- Loss of interest in activities
- Difficulty sleeping or sleeping too much
- Energy loss of fatigue
- Difficulty concentrating
- Feeling helpless and hopeless
- Risk taking behavior
- Extreme withdrawal from friends and family
- Giving away favorite possessions
- Neglect in school work
- Stomachaches, headaches
If someone you know is suffering 5 or more of these symptoms for over a 2 week period of time, he/she may be suffering from DEPRESSION!”
Along with these signs was a number,
NATIONAL SUICIDE HOTLINE 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
When Chase died, his classmates wanted to put a memorial outside the school. The reaction that garnered from administration was as bad as if they had wanted to put up naked pictures of the principle outside the school, Edwards said. They wouldn’t have it. “The reason they said,” Edwards explained. “Was, if we put up a memorial toward him then we would be glorifying his death and we might give some other poor, troubled kid the wrong idea, that ‘hey, maybe if I kill myself they’ll put a memorial out there for me.’”
Edwards then rebuked their “logic” by saying that if they were admitting to the fact that there were other troubled kids who could be pushed over the edge by a memorial then they were acknowledging there were sick kids in their midst that might have been suffering. “And what’s to say it wouldn’t be something else that pushed them over the edge?” He asked. “The question was raised: what are you doing to prevent that from happening? And at the time they were doing nothing.”