STARKVILLE — Ashley Pate was an undergraduate student at the University of Southern Mississippi, where her friends would talk to her about suicidal thoughts, not knowing where else to go for help. Saturday morning, she is leading an Out of the Darkness Walk for suicide prevention through the Junction.
“I’ve known a lot of people who have experienced suicidal thoughts, and I remember trying to figure out how to help these people — help my friends,” Pate said. “And I remember not really knowing what to do, especially as an undergrad. … I think it’s really important to start these conversations with undergrads.”
Pate is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at Mississippi State. She said working as a therapist on campus as part of her program made her want to do more to help with suicide awareness and prevention.
“There are a lot of mental health concerns in my undergraduate students,” Pate said. “The idea is to kind of open the door for that conversation, to bring this walk to the campus, to let people know it’s OK to talk about it and to bring some light to the resources that are available on campus to students.”
She and her co-chair for the Out of the Darkness Walk, Rachel Scott, reached out to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and found the initiative.
The Out of the Darkness Campus Walks are the primary fundraising event series for ASFP. The program organizes non-competitive walks across the nation, both on campus and in communities. As a part of the campaign, participants talk about suicide prevention and raise money for the cause individually and on teams.
MSU’s walk will start at 10 a.m. The walk does not have a set end distance. Pate said this was not a competitive walk, but an “intimate” time for conversation and sharing personal experiences with students and members of the community.
Besides walking, participants will also be encouraged to write notes on ribbons to those they have lost. Tables filled with information on mental health resources on campus will also be available during the walk. There will also be raffles and other giveaways going on throughout the event.
Meghan Goldbeck, executive director for the Louisiana and Mississippi Chapters of AFSP, said the location of the campus walks is key, as young people need to be a part of the conversation around mental health and suicide.
The AFSP said suicide is the third leading cause of death for 15- to 34-year-olds, based on a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report from 2020. The report notes 13,993 people in that age range died that year from suicide.
“Our young adults are really experiencing a lot of challenges when it comes to their mental health, and that can put someone at an increased chance of suicide,” Goldbeck said. “… We look at the death statistics that come out from the CDC every year, which are so alarming, but we don’t really know how many people are struggling.”
Goldbeck said stigma around mental health issues, under-insurance, lack of resources, late emergence of mental disorders, and many other factors contribute to the high rate of suicide for this age group. She said every case is complex, and there is no one clear cause of suicide.
Participants in Out of the Darkness Walks are encouraged to wear “honor beads” during the event, to display their personal experience with suicide to connect with their fellow walkers. For example, green represents personal experience with suicidal ideation, while white represents the loss of a child, Goldbeck said.
Goldbeck said the Out of the Darkness walks can help all those involved to feel less alone, as people can identify shared struggles through the beads that they wear.
“So many people who struggle with suicidal ideation or who have lost loved ones find it very isolating,” Goldbeck said. “We find people are like, ‘No one knows what I feel like.’ This is an event where campuses come together and rally around each other and support each other, and demand that we make mental health and suicide prevention a priority.”
On-site registration for the event begins at 10 a.m. Saturday. No registration fee is required to participate, but participants are encouraged to fundraise for the cause and will receive a t-shirt if they raise more than $100. As of press time on Friday, $4,500 had been raised out of the walk’s $5,000 goal.
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