by Lori Wince, for ThisWeek Community News
Students, residents and health-care professionals were talking about mental-health issues and suicide prevention last week when actress and mental-health advocate Mariel Hemingway visited New Albany.
Hemingway met with 1,000 students on Oct. 12 to suggest ways to identify peers who might be struggling with mental-health issues.
The students were from New Albany High School, Columbus Academy, Columbus School for Girls, Gahanna Lincoln High School, Johnstown-Monroe High School, the KIPP School (Knowledge is Power Program) of Columbus; Licking Heights High School, Marburn Academy, Mifflin High School, St. Charles Preparatory High School, Upper Arlington High School and Westerville High School.
She spoke to health-care professionals Oct. 13 at the Philip Heit Center for Healthy New Albany and to people who attended the Jefferson Series lecture that evening at the Jeanne B. McCoy Community Center for the Arts.
Hemingway said eight people in her family committed suicide and addiction and mental illness plagued many of her relatives.
She emphasized the importance of talking about the issue, saying that her parents were embarrassed or ashamed of her older sister’s mental illnesses and chose to send her away and not tell the other siblings what was happening.
Hemingway said she remembers when her family retrieved her sister, Joan, from “the school” she supposedly was attending, which was actually a state hospital.
“As a larger population, we’re afraid of it,” Hemingway said of mental illness.
Hemingway praised professionals from Concord Counseling Services who work in New Albany High School through an ADAMH grant for their list of signs students should watch for in their peers.
Linda Jakes, associate director of Concord Counseling, said students should watch for changes in behavior, like isolation.
She said weight gain and weight loss also can be a sign of problems.
Dr. David Axelson, chief of psychiatry and medical director of behavioral health for Nationwide Children’s Hospital, said the hospital recently started the Center for Suicide Prevention and Research, which will study why numbers of teenage suicides have increased in central Ohio.
At the conclusion of the Jefferson Series event Oct. 13, New Albany Community Foundation board chairman Dennis Welch announced “The Mariel Hemingway Project,” which will be a collaboration of the foundation, Healthy New Albany, the New Albany-Plain Local School District, Concord Counseling, Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center to improve mental health services in schools and the community.