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WILKES-BARRE — People from all walks of life participated in the Out of the Darkness Walk, hosted by the Greater Northeast PA chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention on Sunday.
The walk began in Kirby Park and led walkers to Public Square and through a few residential streets before returning to the park.
According to its website, the foundation is the nation’s largest nonprofit dedicated to suicide prevention.
The just over 3-mile walk is meant to raise money and awareness for suicide prevention, co-chair of the walk Anna Elkin-Wren said.
Members of the foundation use donations to visit places like schools and businesses that have been affected by suicide, or want more resources to prevent it.
Area director of the eastern and central Pennsylvania chapters of the foundation, Samantha Benz, added that any money that doesn’t stay local goes to advocating for legislation dealing with mental health, as well as funding research grants for people studying mental illness and suicide prevention.
Participants formed teams in January, Elkin-Wren said, and did fundraising on their own prior to the walk. The foundation is collecting donations until Dec. 31.
The walk began around 2 p.m., and was preceded by an opening ceremony, which included a reading by participant Dawn Evans of a poem entitled “We Remember Them.”
Kylie Lotz sang the National Anthem and volunteered to help the foundation sell merchandise.
The shirts at the table where Lotz sat read, “Be The Voice.” Lotz explained that this slogan dealt with the stigma associated with mental illness.
“I think it’s a sort of summation of taking the taboo away from talking about suicide and suicide prevention,” Lotz said. “Not that you want to normalize it, but the more you talk about it in a way that’s fair and honest, it takes the stigma away. I think that makes people who are struggling … maybe feel more open talking about their experience and accessing help.”
Donna West Campbell, Elkin-Wren’s mother-in-law and fellow volunteer, said that she understands the need for increased honesty in conversations about suicide, because she has worked as an addiction nurse for six years — and that wearing the foundation’s merchandise alone has opened up several of her patients.
“Wearing the clothes to work — ‘be the voice,’ ‘out of the darkness’ — it has had a lot of the addicts and alcoholics I work with come to me, and otherwise they won’t,” she said. “It’s very eye-opening to see how sometimes they (addiction and suicide) go hand in hand.”
Elkin-Wren said that Northeastern Pennsylvania has a specific need for suicide prevention resources.
“The suicide rate is rising in the area … the opioid epidemic correlates a lot with this. A lot of people resort to drugs when they are feeling depressed or anxious,” she said. “A lot of that is going on in our community. So I think it’s more important than ever to raise awareness and show people that they have support.”
The walk is an emotional event for those affected, Elkin-Wren said.
Denise Mengak, a clinical social worker, sat at a tent in Kirby Park to offer support for those at the event who might have been having a hard time. She is a board member of the local chapter of the foundation.
Mengak is also a facilitator of a suicide bereavement group, sponsored by Luzerne-Wyoming Counties Mental Health and Developmental Services, and an employee of Catholic Social Services. At her tent was a variety of resources for those in grief.
“The loss from a suicide is what they consider a disenfranchised grief — that is a type of loss that our culture shuns, and people don’t feel that they are embraced or accepted through the normal types of support,” she explained.
“All kinds of folks have come today. People with new loss, people who are here getting resources for their family members who kind of just were too overwhelmed and couldn’t attend today … It’s something that no one wants to talk about, but something that I think has touched almost everyone’s life.”
