Mattoon, Illinois-based flight nurses Kelly Hamill and Dakota Shadwell of the Air Evac Lifeteam are receiving nationwide recognition for using the new Bubble CPAP non-invasive ventilation equipment to save the life of a preterm baby born at about six months gestation, who weighed only two pounds.
Hammill advocated to obtain the new equipment for its east Central Illinois crews to help young children in respiratory distress, and now both flight nurses will be honored for saving the life of a preterm baby during the American Ambulance Association Stars of Life Awards Ceremony on Nov. 5-8 in Washington.
Daily Nurse is proud to honor flight nurses Kelly Hamill and Dakota Shadwell as our Nurses of the Week for going above and beyond the call of duty in a clinically and emotionally tense situation involving a newborn.
Hamill says this call for service began one night in late spring when she, Shadwell, and their pilot were dispatched from their air base on the grounds of Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center in Mattoon to HSHS Good Shepherd Hospital in Shelbyville.
A woman had given birth prematurely at home and taken with her baby to Good Shepherd’s emergency department. Medical staff there reported the baby was having trouble breathing. Hamill and her crew advised them to use their Bubble CPAP equipment to help.
“We took care of baby and kept an eye on mom,” Hamill says. They used this equipment with a RAM Cannula oxygen delivery device to provide respiratory care until an ambulance arrived to take the baby to a neonatal facility.
Hamill, who has worked as a flight nurse for more than a decade and is the base clinical lead in Mattoon, says her previous professional experience with a neonatal intensive care unit led to her being a proponent of the new Bubble CPAP equipment, which is designed specifically for small and fragile patients.
Hamill says she figured this non-invasive ventilation equipment would be helpful for the young patients they see with RSV and other respiratory issues. She was glad to receive Bubble CPAP training through her employer’s Kentucky bases and help bring this training back home.
“I can’t be prouder of the crews for really taking hold of this project and wanting to learn about it and utilize these pieces of equipment,” she says.
Shadwell, a flight nurse for a year and a half, says local Air Evac Lifeteam crews have already used the new Bubble CPAP equipment they obtained several months ago to help a few infants, but the one at the Shelbyville call was the smallest.
“It was a team effort. Everyone involved made the outcome good,” says Shadwell. “It is an honor, but we both feel like we were just doing our jobs.”
Nominate a Nurse of the Week! Every Wednesday, DailyNurse.com features a nurse making a difference in the lives of their patients, students, and colleagues. We encourage you to nominate a nurse who has impacted your life as the next Nurse of the Week, and we’ll feature them online and in our weekly newsletter.
It was a little before 5 a.m. when Nurse of the Week Stephanie Esterland, RN, OCN, and her son happened upon on the accident, just as a young man staggered out of his wrecked, burning car and collapsed near it.
“You could feel the heat from the car. It sounded like there were fireworks in it.”
The oncology nurse – who has become accustomed to pitching in at such scenes – immediately parked her car behind the other vehicles of onlookers stopped alongside the country road and went to help, disregarding her son’s shouted warnings. “He was five, ten feet from the car. You could feel the heat from the car. It sounded like there were fireworks in it,” she recalls.
Worried that the car might explode, Esterland, her son and a bystander moved the young man away from the vehicle. Then she held his head steady — his clavicle was broken — and kept him talking so he’d remain conscious.
“I kept asking him who he was and asking about his family. I could tell his ankles were broken, his arm had to be broken, he had blood coming out of his mouth,” she says.
She’s not sure how long it took for paramedics to arrive from a nearby firehouse. “Five, ten minutes … it could have been longer.”
The paramedics took over for Esterland, an off-duty police officer checked the car for other passengers — fortunately, there were none — and the firefighters put out the car fire.
Only when Esterland arrived at work did she realize she had the young driver’s blood on her blouse.
At which point, Esterland finished taking her son, whose car had broken down, to work. Had she not been driving him, she wouldn’t have been on the road that early and arrived in time to help. Then she went on to her job as a cancer nurse navigator at the RUSH University Cancer Center clinic in Lisle.
She later learned that the young man, who had run into a tree, survived the accident, which took place early last June in a rural part of the far western suburbs. He’s credited her for helping save his life.
In recognition of her response that morning, Esterland received the Oncology Nursing Society’s Frontline Care Award on April 28 during the society’s annual conference, held in in Anaheim, California. The American Red Cross of Greater Chicago also honored her with the Healthcare Hero award during its annual Heroes Breakfast, which was held on May 11 at the Hilton Chicago.
She previously received the DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses from the DAISY (Diseases Attacking the Immune System) Foundation, which honors nurses who provide exceptionally compassionate and skillful care to patients and families. “Her nursing instincts kicked in, and she did not even consider doing anything besides helping the victim,” her fellow nurses Colleen Bruen, RN, BMTCN, cancer nurse navigator and lymphoma clinic coordinator, and Denise Hauser, RN, OCN, cancer nurse navigator, wrote in nominating Esterland for the award.
An unstoppable hero at work, too
Only when Esterland arrived at work did she realize she had the young driver’s blood on her blouse. Undaunted, she made a quick trip to Walmart for a new shirt and returned to the clinic. “She never considered leaving work, despite all that had already happened within just a few short hours,” Bruen and Hauser wrote.
“Most people would not run toward a burning car,” they continued. “Most people would not help a stranger bloodied from a traumatic accident. Most people would not be able to compose themselves to go on to work and function at a high level. But no one else is Stephanie.”
Remarkably, Esterland has come to the aid of strangers in crisis before. While she and her son were driving near a home on another early morning, they found a man left unconscious in the middle of another country road after a fight, and she called 911 for him. When a 20-something audience member went into a seizure at a concert, she gave his friends direction until paramedics arrived. (Rumors that she also fights crime, however, have not been confirmed.)
For all her improbably frequent heroism, Esterland makes her greatest impact in her day-to-day work, which she divides between the Lisle clinic and the cancer center’s main location on the RUSH University Medical Center campus. She calls patients with cancer ahead of their first appointment to assess their needs and arrange for them to be met. Esterland provides ongoing education for patients and families about the disease and treatment options and tracks patients’ medications to ensure uninterrupted care.
“Stephanie is a caring and empathetic nurse who places patients and families above her needs, and indeed places humanity above her own needs and safety,” says Sharon Manson RN, MS, OCN, associate vice president, oncology nursing, RUSH University Cancer Center.
“Her patients love her, and the compassion she shows in their care is unparalleled. She maintains the highest standards of nursing, critical thinking and leadership qualities,” says Parameswaran Venugopal, MD, the Elodia Kehm Chair of Hematology, professor of medicine and director of the Section of Hematology.
From dropout to doctorate
Her desire to help people drove Esterland to overcome setbacks to her childhood dream of being a nurse. She dropped out of high school and had three children before going back to school at age 26 and earning her Bachelor of Science in nursing.
She’d planned on being an obstetrics nurse, but an in-law with head and neck cancer persuaded her to specialize in oncology instead. Esterland previously worked at RUSH Copley Medical Center and joined the cancer center nearly two years ago after working for another organization. “I’m back at RUSH, and it’s great,” she says.
She loves working with patients from their diagnosis through the treatment process. “You help with every aspect — biopsies, imaging, you provide education, symptom management for their chemotherapy, and you see them do well, or at the other end, you provide palliative care,” she says. “It’s every step of nursing. You get every facet.”
“Since I was in, I think, about 4th or 5th grade I knew I wanted to be a nurse,” says Brittany Wilborn, RN. It took the mother of five nearly a decade, but Wilborn, our Nurse of the Week, knows how to persevere and how to pace herself. She has cleared the many obstacles in her path, developed an arsenal of leadership skills, and is steadily amassing a collection of nursing credentials. Over the past 10 years, she progressed from a CNA to an LPN, then an ADN RN. Before the ink had dried on her RN, she had gone on to enroll in a BSN program. And after that? She plans to become an FNP.
Wilborn’s nursing aspirations were born early in life. As a child in Galesburg, Illinois, when Brittany went to see her pediatrician, it was not the doctor, but the nurse who attracted the little girl’s rapt admiration. The APRN-to-be recalls, “I thought she was so pretty, and she was professional. The way she approached me and treated me, made me feel better about myself and the situation. That’s when I knew that I wanted to be a nurse.”
But she had a lot of living to experience first. After Wilborn graduated from high school in 2010, she enrolled at Carl Sandberg College to begin her studies and earn her CNA credentials. However, life had other plans for her. Brittany became pregnant and soon dropped out to give birth to twin boys. (Twin boys have a talent for stopping all sorts of things). For the next few years, she focused on mothering the boys through their Terrible Twos and had two more children. Looking back, Wilborn thinks she needed to do some growing up herself first. “Now I feel like it [dropping out of college] was an excuse that I was making,” she said, and added, “And I think it’s one that a lot of us, as parents, make. ‘Oh, the kids, oh the kids!” After giving birth to child number four, though, she decided it was time to move fully into independent adulthood and pursue that nursing career: “2014 is when my journey really began to take off. I became a CNA, started working, got an apartment, and moved out of my mom’s house….”
After earning her CNA, Brittany went on to complete Sandburg’s Licensed Practical Nursing program in 2018. However, as a woman of color she had been subject to so many non-criminal law enforcement encounters that the NCLEX-PN criminal background check was deeply intimidating. Anxious and overwhelmed, she went no further until Covid and an insightful instructor pushed her forward. While Wilborn was working as a CNA at the height of the pandemic, the nurse she was assisting told her, “I don’t know why you won’t be a nurse. Why won’t you take your boards?’ Then, Stacy Bainter, MSN, a Sandburg nursing faculty member, also urged her to go ahead. “I realized that [your history] doesn’t define who you are and what you’re capable of,” Wilborn says. And, with a conscientiousness typical of good nurses, she thought, “If (Bainter) believed in me and Sandburg believed in me to give me this degree, I owe it to them to at least apply for my nursing license and put it to use.” She also began to flex her leadership skills (valuable not only for nurses but to any mother of twin boys). Brittany joined Sandburg’s Black Student Association, became a student trustee for Sandburg’s Board of Trustees, and was selected as chairperson for the Illinois Community College Board’s Student Advisory Committee.
Today, Wilborn has five kids and a growing collection of degrees and certifications. She is now an RN with an associate’s degree (ADN), but that is just the beginning. Wilborn is pursuing her BSN now at a joint Sandburg/Chamberlain College program, and after that plans to enroll in the FNP program at Chamberlain College. If there are more obstacles ahead, Wilborn will find her way around them: “It’s necessary for me to keep going because I know that I can. It’s necessary because I feel like I shouldn’t limit myself. For some people, the ceiling, that’s their limit. And for others, the ceiling is your bottom.”
For more on Brittany Wilborn, RN, see her interview with local TV station KWQC.
Our Nurse of the Week, Clinical Nurse Specialist Lois M. Stallings-Welden, DNP, began her career as a nurse’s aide and at age 70, her pursuit of nursing excellence is still inspiring younger generations. This month, the nurse-leader, researcher, and educator was tapped by her alma mater, the University of Southern Indiana, for their 2021 Distinguished Nursing Alumni Award in honor of her influential – and ongoing – contributions as a mentor, clinician, and role model.
“Lois is an outstanding mentor for nursing staff at all levels, sharing knowledge and critical thinking skills in a calm, compassionate and easily approachable manner,” wrote one of her award nominators. “She educates on the importance of using nursing research and evidence to support practice changes to improve nursing care and patient outcomes. She is a nurse who exhibits passion for the nursing profession by being a role model and encouraging others to strive to improve and develop themselves.”
“I will not hire 16-year-olds because they are not dependable!”
Welden, one of seven children, was born in Indianapolis and raised on a farm in north central Indiana. When she was only 15 years old, she applied to work as a nurse aide at Clinton County Hospital in Frankfort, Indiana, with the intent to earn tuition and room and board money while attending a Christian high school and college that was a few hours from home. When she was denied employment because of her age, she returned three months later at the age of 16 to speak to the Director of Nursing, who abruptly said, “I will not hire 16-year-olds because they are not dependable!” Welden immediately reached out to her teachers and others to obtain letters of recommendation, and she continued to regularly call on the DON to give her the letters as they came in. “She finally gave up and hired me, saying (while pointing her finger at me) that she would train me herself!” said Welden. “She was an old Army nurse whose uniform was heavily starched, and she had a stern, no-nonsense look that was quite intimidating, but I refused to be diverted. I was determined to show her I was dependable.”
This young farm girl with no prior nursing experience embraced the various tasks she was given at the hospital which set the stage for her future career. “While working as a nurse aid there, I realized the joy of caring for patients and that I could be instrumental in alleviating their pain and providing comfort,” she said. “Growing up, I thought I wanted to be a missionary, but with my exposure working as a nurse aide, I knew I wanted to be a nurse.”
In 1979, when her four sons were age 7 and under, she made the decision to begin the nursing program at the University of Evansville while working full-time as a nurse aide at Deaconess Hospital, Evansville. “The hospital made a difference in my life,” she said, recalling the tuition support offered by Deaconess to earn her associate degree in nursing. “They believed in their employees and believed in me. After I graduated from UE, I had other job offers, but I felt like I had something to give back to Deaconess, so I started working as a staff nurse in the cardiac intensive care unit there. Deaconess has also been supportive of the other nursing degrees (bachelor, master’s and doctorate) I have earned.”
“They knew I had high standards.”
Throughout her career at Deaconess, Stallings-Welden has held the titles of assistant head nurse and department director, and today, at age 70, she still currently works full time in nursing leadership as a clinical nurse specialist in the Deaconess Magnet Program and Employee Education Department.
She has also served as adjunct faculty at the University of Southern Indiana since 2015, teaching online Clinical Synthesis and Nursing Informatics over the years.
Welden credits USI faculty for her decision to become a nurse manager. “They knew I had high standards,” she said. “One day, I was walking on campus with two of my instructors, and one of them said, ‘Look at your hands. Imagine if you could influence 80 to 100 nurses to give the same care that you do?’ I had four kids … I wasn’t interested in the manager job, but what they said got me thinking. I’ve been fortunate to hold positions to influence nurses to provide excellence in nursing care, use evidence-based practice and be involved in research.”
Each year, the USI Nursing Alumni Society recognizes a graduate who has made outstanding achievements in a career or public service. For more information about the USI Nursing Alumni Society, visit the society’s web page.
Some nurses could easily be Nurse of the Week 52 weeks a year, and Lauren Underwood is one of them.
In 2018, Lauren Underwood, BSN, MSN, MPH inspired nurses and women of color everywhere when she became the youngest Black woman to be elected to Congress. Illinois’ 14th District Congressperson had accomplished a great deal prior to her election and has been busy blazing new trails since her swearing-in. Underwood is still a nurse as well, so it was clear from the start that she was not going to be the kind of representative who spends their time vying for social media “Likes.”
Underwood first was drawn to public policy as a teen, and in 2009 earned both her MPH and MSN at Johns Hopkins. Already a vocal advocate of the ACA, in 2014 the Obama administration tapped her to join their team as a policy advisor, and she quickly became an MVP in the push to obtain passage of the ACA. After Obama left office, she found a position as Senior Director of Strategy and Regulatory Affairs at Next Level Health and served as an adjunct instructor at the Georgetown University School of Nursing & Health Studies.
But what prompted her to take on the enormous challenge of running for office? As a promising candidate back in 2018, she told Janice Phillips at Minority Nurse that she had been bitterly disappointed by her predecessor during the ACA repeal frenzy after the end of Obama’s term. At a local League of Women Voters meeting, her own representative “said that he was only going to support a version of Obamacare repeal that allowed people with preexisting conditions to keep their coverage.” As Underwood herself has a heart condition – AND had worked hard to get the ACA passed – she felt invested both professionally and personally in the rep’s promise.
“When I walked into a room, even with people who didn’t share my political point of view, they knew that I was very clear on what was going on in our health care system.”
However, “A week to ten days later he went and voted for the American Health Care Act, which is a version of repeal that did the opposite. It made it cost-prohibitive for people like me to get coverage. But, she stressed, “I was upset not at the vote itself, but because he did not have the integrity to be honest the one time he stood before our community…. A representative is supposed to be transparent, accessible, and honest. And we deserve better. I said, ‘you know what, it’s on! I’m running.’”
Early this summer, Sullivan-Marx asked Underwood, “What was one of the drivers as to why you kept leaping forward beyond the usual kind of candidate?”
“Two things,” Underwood responded: “The number one issue in the election was health care and I brought expertise as a nurse. Someone who worked on the ACA. I was working for a provider—a private company. I’ve been a patient and I understood the law as it was, and I had a greater understanding of the ACA than my opponent, the Congressman, and then all my primary opponents— these six guys –they’re great guys—they just did not have the expertise.
When I walked into a room, even with people who didn’t share my political point of view, they knew that I was very clear on what was going on in our health care system. I had many solutions. They knew that I understood the problem and I understood what was going on with their families and that I had been fighting for years to try to solve it… That enabled us to walk into every room and be taken seriously, even if we didn’t agree on anything. People knew that on this issue, which was important to them, that I had credibility. The second thing is that we were willing to show up everywhere in person to engage people and build connections.
The Most Trusted Profession Meets the Most Mistrusted Profession
Sullivan-Marx also asked Underwood to describe her typical day on Capitol Hill:
Underwood: “In this Congress, I am assigned to two committees—the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs (VA). I’m on the Health Subcommittee. The VA is an incredible health care system that has its challenges. I focus pretty exclusively on suicide prevention, mental health, and women’s health care. The VA has this unbelievable responsibility for caring for women veterans across the lifespan. I think folks forget that there are still cadet nurse corps members from World War II that are alive and they’re active and they’re getting care in the VA that has been inconsistent at best.
“I think that nurses take for granted that every elected official knows a nurse or has interacted with nurses. We assume that they know about the work that we do.
In my experience that is completely false. They have no clue what happens at schools of nursing. They have no idea the level of expertise that a BSN graduate brings.”
I also serve on a House Committee on Appropriations. The Congress has three core functions: we create programs and we call that authorizing to solve problems. We fund the federal government appropriations, including funding those programs, and then we do Congressional oversight over the executive branch. Within the appropriations committee, I am assigned to the Agriculture Subcommittee, which also has jurisdiction over the Food and Drug Administration. That’s how we fund COVID and tobacco. Trying to make sure that we are curbing the tobacco usage epidemic. And then I serve on the Homeland Security Subcommittee. There we have ICE [U.S. Custom and Immigration Enforcement], immigration, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), cyber security, and the US–Mexico border and the Canadian border. It’s fascinating and then obviously I still do health care work, too.”
Calling all Nurses…
Toward the end of the interview, Sullivan-Marx asked, “What kind of assistance would be great for nursing to give you? How can we be helpful to you?”
The Congresswoman said, “Nurses have been so helpful for us in terms of gathering and presenting evidence. Many of these problems have a local focus and for us in Congress it is very difficult to get that kind of local data. Evaluation type data demonstrating that an intervention is effective. We can build relationships with nurses, either in our communities or folks who’ve been impacted by these problems. Site visits and testimonial stories are very powerful.
“We [nurses] have got to do better about inviting them [members of Congress] in.”
I think that nurses take for granted that every elected official knows a nurse or has interacted with nurses. We assume that they know about the work that we do. In my experience that is completely false. They have no clue what happens at schools of nursing. They have no idea the level of expertise that a BSN graduate brings. They have no idea what APRNs do. They have no idea what practicing to the full extent of our education and training means. We [nurses] have got to do better about inviting them [members of Congress] in. My colleagues are very familiar with physician education. Their whole advocacy strategy is completely different than how nursing engages members of Congress and we’ve got to step it up.”
Yes, let’s step it up! The full interview with Underwood is a great read. If you have an opportunity, check out Policy, Politics, and Nursing Practice, “Eileen Sullivan-Marx Interview of Representative Lauren Underwood (Democrat-Illinois 14th District)” here.
Thanks to Eileen Sullivan-Marx for graciously sharing her interview with DailyNurse.
Rafiah Maxie has been a licensed clinical social worker in the Chicago area for a decade. Throughout that time, she’d viewed suicide as a problem most prevalent among middle-aged white men.
Until May 27, 2020.
That day, Maxie’s 19-year-old son, Jamal Clay — who loved playing the trumpet and participating in theater, who would help her unload groceries from the car and raise funds for the March of the Dimes — killed himself in their garage.
“Now I cannot blink without seeing my son hanging,” said Maxie, who is Black.
Clay’s death, along with the suicides of more than 100 other Black residents in Illinois last year, has led locals to call for new prevention efforts focused on Black communities. In 2020, during the pandemic’s first year, suicides among white residents decreased compared with previous years, while they increased among Black residents, according to state data.
But this is not a local problem. Nor is it limited to the pandemic.
Interviews with a dozen suicide researchers, data collected from states across the country and a review of decades of research revealed that suicide is a growing crisis for communities of color — one that plagued them well before the pandemic and has only been exacerbated since.
Overall suicide rates in the U.S. decreased in 2019 and 2020. National and local studies attribute the trend to a drop among white Americans, who make up the majority of suicide deaths. Meanwhile, rates for Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans — though lower than their white peers — continued to climb in many states. (Suicide rates have been consistently high for Native Americans.)
“Covid created more transparency regarding what we already knew was happening,” said Sonyia Richardson, a licensed clinical social worker who focuses on serving people of color and an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, where she researches suicide. When you put the suicide rates of all communities in one bucket, “that bucket says it’s getting better and what we’re doing is working,” she said. “But that’s not the case for communities of color.”
Research shows Black kids younger than 13 die by suicide at nearly twice the rate of white kids and, over time, their suicide rates have grown even as rates have decreased for white children. Among teenagers and young adults, suicide deaths have increased more than 45% for Black Americans and about 40% for Asian Americans in the seven years ending in 2019. Other concerning trends in suicide attempts date to the ’90s.
“We’re losing generations,” said Sean Joe, a national expert on Black suicide and a professor at Washington University in St. Louis. “We have to pay attention now because if you’re out of the first decade of life and think life is not worth pursuing, that’s a signal to say something is going really wrong.”
Rafiah Maxie pages through a scrapbook on July 9, 2021, in Olympia Fields, Illinois. She and her son, Jamal Clay, made the book together. Clay died by suicide at age 19 in 2020. (Taylor Glascock for KHN)
These statistics also refute traditional ideas that suicide doesn’t happen in certain ethnic or minority populations because they’re “protected” and “resilient” or the “model minority,” said Kiara Alvarez, a researcher and psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who focuses on suicide among Hispanic and immigrant populations.
Although these groups may have had low suicide rates historically, that’s changing, she said.
Paul Chin lost his 17-year-old brother, Chris, to suicide in 2009. A poem Chris wrote in high school about his heritage has left Chin, eight years his senior, wondering if his brother struggled to feel accepted in the U.S., despite being born and raised in New York.
Growing up, Asian Americans weren’t represented in lessons at school or in pop culture, said Chin, now 37. Even in clinical research on suicide as well as other health topics, kids like Chris are underrepresented, with less than 1% of federal research funding focused on Asian Americans.
It wasn’t until the pandemic, and the concurrent rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans, that Chin saw national attention on the community’s mental health. He hopes the interest is not short-lived.
Suicide is the leading cause of death for Asian Americans ages 15 to 24, yet “that doesn’t get enough attention,” Chin said. “It’s important to continue to share these stories.”
Kathy Williams, who is Black, has been on a similar mission since her 15-year-old son, Torian Graves, died by suicide in 1996. People didn’t talk about suicide in the Black community then, she said. So she started raising the topic at her church in Durham, North Carolina, and in local schools. She wanted Black families to know the warning signs and society at large to recognize the seriousness of the problem.
The pandemic may have highlighted this, Williams said, but “it has always happened. Always.”
Pandemic Sheds Light on the Triggers
Pinpointing the root causes of rising suicide within communities of color has proven difficult. How much stems from mental illness? How much from socioeconomic changes like job losses or social isolation? Now, covid may offer some clues.
Recent decades have been marked by growing economic instability, a widening racial wealth gap and more public attention on police killings of unarmed Black and brown people, said Michael Lindsey, executive director of the New York University McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research.
With social media, youths face racism on more fronts than their parents did, said Leslie Adams, an assistant professor in the department of mental health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Each of these factors has been shown to affect suicide risk. For example, experiencing racism and sexism together is linked to a threefold increase in suicidal thoughts for Asian American women, said Brian Keum, an assistant professor at UCLA, based on preliminary research findings.
Covid intensified these hardships among communities of color, with disproportionate numbers of lost loved ones, lost jobs and lost housing. The murder of George Floyd prompted widespread racial unrest, and Asian Americans saw an increase in hate crimes.
At the same time, studies in Connecticut and Maryland found that suicide rates rose within these populations and dropped for their white counterparts.
“It’s not just a problem within the person, but societal issues that need to be addressed,” said Shari Jager-Hyman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania’s school of medicine.
During this time, suicide deaths among Hispanic Texans climbed from 847 deaths in 2019 to 962 deaths in 2020, according to preliminary state data. Suicide deaths rose for Black Texans and residents classified as “other” races or ethnicities, but decreased for white Texans.
Marc Mendiola often heard his classmates at South San High School say they were suicidal. In 2017, Mendiola and his classmates began advocating for mental health services at the school. (Photo: Marc Mendiola)
The numbers didn’t surprise Marc Mendiola. The 20-year-old grew up in a majority-Hispanic community on the south side of San Antonio. Even before the pandemic, he often heard classmates say they were suicidal. Many faced dire finances at home, sometimes living without electricity, food or water. Those who sought mental health treatment often found services prohibitively expensive or inaccessible because they weren’t offered in Spanish.
“These are conditions the community has always been in,” Mendiola said. “But with the pandemic, it’s even worse.”
Four years ago, Mendiola and his classmates at South San High School began advocating for mental health services. In late 2019, just months before covid struck, their vision became reality. Six community agencies partnered to offer free services to students and their families across three school districts.
Richard Davidson, chief operating officer of Family Service, one of the groups in the collaborative, said the number of students discussing economic stressors has been on the rise since April 2020. More than 90% of the students who received services in the first half of 2021 were Hispanic, and nearly 10% reported thoughts of suicide or self-harm, program data shows. None died by suicide.
Many students are so worried about what’s for dinner the next day that they’re not able to see a future beyond that, Davidson said. That’s when suicide can feel like a viable option.
“One of the things we do is help them see … that despite this situation now, you can create a vision for your future,” Davidson said.
A Good Future
Researchers say the promise of a good future is often overlooked in suicide prevention, perhaps because achieving it is so challenging. It requires economic and social growth and breaking systemic barriers.
Tevis Simon works to address all those fronts. As a child in West Baltimore, Simon, who is Black, faced poverty and trauma. As an adult, she attempted suicide three times. But now she shares her story with youths across the city to inspire them to overcome challenges. She also talks to politicians, law enforcement agencies and public policy officials about their responsibilities.
Growing up in West Baltimore, Maryland, Tevis Simon dealt with poverty and trauma. She attempted suicide three times as an adult — but now uses her story to teach and inspire others. (Photo: Tevis Simon)
“We can’t not talk about race,” said Simon, 43. “We can’t not talk about systematic oppression. We cannot not talk about these conditions that affect our mental well-being and our feeling and desire to live.”
For Jamal Clay in Illinois, the systemic barriers started early. Before his suicide last year, he had tried to harm himself when he was 12 and the victim of bullies. At that time, he was hospitalized for a few days and told to follow up with outpatient therapy, said his mother, Maxie.
But it was difficult to find therapists who accepted Medicaid, she said. When Maxie finally found one, there was a 60-day wait. Other therapists canceled appointments, she said.
“So we worked on our own,” Maxie said, relying on church and community. Her son seemed to improve. “We thought we closed that chapter in our lives.”
But when the pandemic hit, everything got worse, she said. Clay came home from college and worked at an Amazon warehouse. On drives to and from work, he was frequently pulled over by police. He stopped wearing hats so officers would consider him less intimidating, Maxie said.
“He felt uncomfortable being out in the street,” she said.
Maxie is still trying to make sense of what happened the day Clay died. But she’s found meaning in starting a nonprofit called Soul Survivors of Chicago. Through the organization, she provides education, scholarships and shoes — including Jamal’s old ones — to those impacted by violence, suicide and trauma.
“My son won’t be able to have a first interview in [those] shoes. He won’t be able to have a nice jump shot or go to church or even meet his wife,” Maxie said.
But she hopes his shoes will carry someone else to a good future.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifelineat 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
