Like many of you, I am a paramedic and a firefighter. The thing that may set me apart is that I am also a suicide survivor; a person in a club no one wants to join. I would like to take this opportunity to help you, my peers, understand the nature of mental illness and suicide.

   My life has changed completely—twice. The first change came after the death of my wife, Mary, on March 5, 2003, and the second came on October 15, 2008, after the death of my 27-year-old brother, Jeremy. The cause of both Mary's and Jeremy's deaths was severe depression that resulted in suicide.

   With Mary, our family could see the runaway train of mental illness coming down the tracks and could do nothing about it in spite of our best efforts. Mary was on six medications at the time of her death, had received in-patient and out-patient care, read self-help books avidly, sought religious counsel, tried meditation and breath work, was a member of a peer support group, went through electroconvulsive therapy, and was attended to regularly by her psychologist, psychiatrist and social worker. Every time Mary was hospitalized, her friends and family rallied to support her with telephone calls and visits to the behavioral health unit. We loved Mary and she knew it.

   Jeremy was a different story. Although my family was aware of anxiety and depression issues, we had no idea as to the depths of his despair. Later, I learned from Jeremy's journal that he felt he was somehow morally flawed and "less of a man" because of his disease. Because of these beliefs, he kept the extent of his illness from the very family and friends who loved him and would have offered help. Instead, Jeremy kept his pain to himself and drank alcohol until he passed out every night, just so he could get to sleep. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, it is estimated that 29% of people diagnosed with a mental illness abuse either alcohol or drugs.

   Mary succumbed to her illness early one cold March morning in the back seat of her van in a parking lot of an apartment complex not more than two miles from our home. In spite of great pains taken by her social worker to ration her medications, she managed to fatally overdose on them.