Friday Favorites: Depression and Suicide Prevention

This brought me to tears and has a message everyone should hear.  Give it a few minutes of your time.  You won't regret it:



My friend Cheryl has written openly and often about her own struggles with depression.  I highly recommend a recent link about how to recognize and get help:

  Just Choose to Be Happy 

She explains how "just choosing" isn't always an option for someone with mental health issues, then goes on to describe what has helped her.

And another of my favorite bloggers wrote this:

Sitting on the Bench

Suicide touched her son's high school this week and she writes movingly of the effect on the students.

"Most people would heroically step in if they felt like they could prevent a suicide– pull someone off the edge of the bridge, offer CPR, call 911. But are we willing to listen when someone is sad, to mourn with those who mourn, to offer sympathy even when we don’t understand why they are hurting?

Why are we on this swiftly tilting planet? Not to accumulate ‘likes’ or possessions, not to make our mark or show our strength. All those things, even “the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing…All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.” Isa. 40:15,17

What does matter? People. Men, women, children, old, young, strong, weak, foolish, wise. We are here to help each other along. To lift the hands that hang down; to offer kind words, firm hugs, listening ears. Stumbling along the path, we will bump and bruise each other, but we will also feed each other, make each other laugh, work in offices and fields, celebrate holy days and small victories, admire flowers and sunsets and babies and with every step, bring each other home.

Comments

Corine Moore said…
*sniffle *sniffle... This video really got to me and made me cry. I can't believe I hadn't seen it! (like I somehow must have seen them all! ;O). I have had VERY CLOSE loved ones go through this terrible struggle. It is real. It is hard. I'm so thankful for this beautiful message of love... :)