Walk to Prevent Suicide | Video

Jenny Castro | 9/8/2012

Cases of depression and suicide usually aren`t talked about often, but hundreds of people registered Saturday at the Out of the Darkness Community Walk to Prevent Suicide in Minot, many of who lost a person to suicide in the last year.

It`s difficult for many people who have lost a loved one to suicide to talk about it, but many people at this event felt more comfortable about it here.

“She always looked so beautiful and she always wore stilettos so we thought our team would be Shelly`s sexy stilettos,” said participant Carol Graves.

The Out of the Darkness Community Walk to Prevent Suicide is only in its third year in Minot. The coordinators, Richard Townsend and his wife Deb, say that it began with their own loss.

"You know, if I can do anything to present a suicide I will do it because I know what people experience,” said Richard.

"We lost a daughter to suicide and that motivated us first to walk for ourselves. We first walked in New York in an overnight walk and that experience really inspired us to find a way to bring that to our own home community,” said Deb.

Many of the people here have recently lost someone from suicide. Richard said that the stress from the flood and the growing community has been a load too heavy for some.

"There are so many ways that it impacts people and there has been an increase in severe depression, there`s been an increase in the number of death`s from suicide over the last year.”

The walk is a healing process for some, but also a way to raise awareness that many people are hurting in the community.

"So this can be prevented in the future, I mean so many people care about others and they just don`t know it, so if we can put the word out that there is always somebody there, that`s why I`m walking,” said Graves.

For more information on the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention their website is www.afsp.org.

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