One person commented that she wished she could have been there for him as if she possessed a superpower that could have saved him. In February 2018, columnist Steven Petrow was in downtown Los Angeles. Indeed, depression causes us to become secretive, concealing our pain and our risk. “People suffering from mental health problems (pull) a shroud of secrecy over their lives in the hope that people don’t find out how they’re really feeling,” one blogger wrote for a mental health campaign a few years ago. An unnoticed burdenĪs much as I was saddened by Tommy’s death, I was also perplexed as I read comments on his public Facebook page because some posts promoted incorrect ideas about depression and suicide. There the congressman was present because he believed it was his duty to count the electoral votes and confirm Joe Biden’s presidential victory, the family showed even more bravery. When, the day after Raskin buried his son, the grieving father found himself caught in the Trump-fueled insurgency at the U.S. It took a lot of guts for the Raskins to come forward. Many researchers believe that these figures are underreported because of the stigma associated with suicide. His depression was “a kind of relentless torture in the brain for him,” and “despite very fine doctors and a loving family… the pain eventually became overwhelming, unyielding, and unbearable.”Ī friend forwarded the Raskins’ message to me because she knows I’ve been an advocate for openness about not only mental illness particularly depression, which I also suffer from but also the national suicide epidemic, which claimed nearly 50,000 lives in 2018.Īccording to the National Institute of Mental Health, the annual suicide rate increased by 35% from 1999 to 2018, with men nearly four times more likely to commit suicide than women. The Raskins named the disease that killed their son at the end of their statement. They wrote that Tommy “had a perfect heart, a perfect soul, a riotously outrageous and relentless sense of humor, and a dazzling radiant mind.” He also had a secret that eventually took his life. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Sarah Bloom Raskin, his bereaved parents, memorialized Tommy in a lengthy Medium post, introducing many of us to their brilliant and much-loved son. Tommy, please accept my heartfelt condolences.” Please look after one another, the animals, and the world’s poor in my name. He left a brief note for his family that read: Thomas Raskin, a 25-year-old Harvard law student, committed suicide on December 31. Continue reading to learn more about the case of suicide.
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