Reach out for help, says suicide prevention speaker

Almost all those suffering from anxiety, depression, or other mental disorders who seek help recover, according to Ross Szabo. Yet, for any number of reasons, few college students struggling to control their lives ever do.

“If you had a bone sticking out of your pants leg, you wouldn’t say you’re all right, would you? No. You’d go get some help,” said Szabo, director of youth outreach for the National Mental Health Awareness Campaign.

“Your leg is just as much a part of your body as your arm, your shoulders, your heart, your head. You deal with breaks. It should be the same with your brain.”

Szabo, delivering the keynote speech for Suicide Prevention Week at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts Sept. 9, said that 66 percent of college students who are suffering from some form of mental distress – most commonly anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and ADHD – refuse to get help. Nor do they tell anybody, even close friends, that they’re in distress.

That’s a recipe for disaster, Szabo said, one that leads people to alcohol, drugs, self-destruction, and – for too many students at college and high school – attempted suicide. Each year, more than 1,100 suicide attempts among college students succeed.

Using mostly personal anecdotes – his older brother was hospitalized with bipolar disorder when Szabo was 11 years old, and Szabo himself was diagnosed as bipolar as a teenager – he kept the audience’s attention throughout his funny, energetic, interactive program.

Through it all, though, he kept returning to his central theme: Talk to people. And if you notice a friend or colleague seems to be struggling, reach out and help them.

“If I didn’t reach out and get help when I was in high school, I wouldn’t be here today,” he said, referring to his own suicide attempt. \

Students, he said, also have to “choose to end the stereotypes, change your personal bias” toward people who acknowledge that they’re struggling, or that they’ve seen a counselor, because that attitude is a key reason why people avoid discussing their problems or going to a mental health clinic.

Szabo said that those stereotypes are what pushed him onto the talk circuit.