LAYTON — A couple of years ago, Margaret Jackson was honored at a YWCA luncheon.
As part of her remarks, she decided to incorporate a few sentiments about her son's recent suicide. She called the response to her remarks "mind-boggling."
"So many people came up to me afterward, sharing their stories. They just wanted to talk to someone," she said. "They'd been waiting and waiting for someone to talk to."
This is the story of how one woman got involved in Utah efforts to educate the public about mental health and suicide among young people.
The death of her son provided the catalyst.
Eddie Jackson has bright eyes and a hundred-watt smile in a photograph. Affable and outgoing, the young man had a natural talent for public speaking. He won several state and regional awards for his oratory skills. One plaque on his bedroom wall recognizes him as the winner of a speaking contest at a Baptist conference in Phoenix. The topic: "Never give up."
Though at ease in front of a crowd, Eddie wasn't at ease with himself.
Edward and Margaret Jackson saw the first signs of trouble between junior high and high school. His parents noticed extreme mood swings in their adopted and only child, but the adoption agency told the Jacksons his biological parents had no history of mental health problems.
A physical exam revealed nothing but growing pains. The Jacksons turned to a psychiatrist who prescribed Prozac for Eddie. The pills didn't make much difference, so he stopped taking them.
Margaret knew her son was struggling and watched him struggle for control through his late teens and early 20s.
A winner of a state young achievers award, Eddie earned a scholarship to Weber State University. But he decided he wasn't ready for college after a semester or two. He married at 21, had a child and divorced. He married again, but that didn't work out either.
Eddie had various attempts at mental-health counseling, but after his first experience with medication back in high school, he wasn't interested in taking anything. Besides, he wanted to join the military but was told he'd have to be off antidepressants for six months. He believed a good diet and working out would make him better.
About 18 months before he died, Eddie had connected with his biological family. He developed a good relationship with his birth mother and three brothers. He learned his family did have a history of mental illness and suicide.
"I don't know if that gave him permission to do what he did," Margaret Jackson said.
On a snowy January day, 24-year-old Eddie put a gun to his head in a field behind a mortuary. Police detectives later found a letter addressed to Mom and Dad typed on his computer. He wrote that he was tired. He expressed love for his daughter and parents. He decided to go home and be with his heavenly father.
"I think that has helped," Margaret Jackson said of the note. "I can't imagine him not even leaving nothing. Just to have those last words. . . . It didn't clarify anything, but it was just something."
In recent years, she's spoken to dozens of family members who've lost sons and daughters to suicides who ached for some explanation. "But they had nothing. No letter. Nothing."
Although the Jacksons knew their son was troubled, they were dumbfounded by his suicide.
"You kind of walk around out of it for months afterward," she said. "You're sort of in a suspended state."
But Margaret Jackson remembered Eddie parroting her own words: "Mom, you've always told me the truth about things."
She and her husband decided, "We are going to continue to tell the truth about things," she said. "That has been a big part of our healing . . . being proactive."
Eddie's story is told over and over in Utah homes where young people and their parents struggle to find a magic cure for depression and mental illness.
Margaret knew she might have something to offer others, and signing on as a suicide prevention volunteer helped her snap out of her daze. She works with the Mental Health Association of Utah and served on the state suicide prevention task force for four years. She participates in fund-raisers for mental health concerns and walks for suicide awareness. Now Elizabeth, Eddie's daughter, walks too.
During the past three years, Margaret Jackson has learned Eddie's suicide was nobody's fault. He made the decision.
"Maybe this is part of my mission," she said. "Even when you do everything, things are still going to happen, and I may never understand exactly why. It is a part of my journey."
And while she understands the complex feelings for families with mental illness among them, she offers straightforward advice.
"It's so easy to blame and point fingers. We think we have control over everything, and we just don't," she says. "If you think there's a problem, pursue it as best you can."
As difficult as it is to retell her family's story, Margaret Jackson believes work like hers is making a difference.
Doctors are becoming more aware of mental-health issues, she says. There is better awareness about mental illness generally, and efforts are in the works for more intense evaluations for young people who are struggling.
"People with mental illness are starting to reap the benefits of these things," Jackson said. "It's going to take some time."
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