SALLY YATES PROFESSIONAL

No one would expect someone suffering from a broken leg, or kidney disease, or a blood disorder to tough it out and handle it themselves. Several years ago, I talked with a friend of mine who also suffered from depression about how it feels, and he told me that when someone is in that abyss, suicide doesn’t appear as an option, it presents as the only option. In a memorial, a friend and judicial colleague spoke of him as “the most loyal man I ever knew, and if somehow I were in the innermost depths of danger or needed a strong man by my side, and I was told I could choose one man to go with me, it would have been Kelley Quillian.”ĭavid Scott Holloway/CNN/Monica Schipper/WireImage/Getty ImagesĪfter a shattering week, a search for the lightīut yet, there he was, drowning in the innermost depths of danger himself, and he was the one who needed help. My dad was someone who lived with an intensity known by few, devoted to his family and friends, always looking for those who needed his help with issues large or small. But I feel a responsibility – underscored by the events of last week with Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade’s deaths, and the disturbing news about the rising suicide rate – to use whatever voice I now have to help to dispel the shame or stigma associated with mental illness and to encourage those suffering to get treatment. And to me, this diminishes the value of their lives. I also hate that for him, as for others who take their lives, they come to be defined by how they died rather than how they lived. I haven’t spoken much publicly of my father’s death – while it was over 30 years ago, it is still knock-the-breath-out-of-me painful. And yet we felt helpless to bring him out of that darkness.īut looking back, I know that we weren’t helpless, and I will live every day with regret that I didn’t more forcefully insist that he get help.Īnthony bourdain fan q and a cnn_00013719.jpgĭoctor: Suicide prevention: here's how you can help

We were an incredibly close family, not just talking about everything, but feeling each other’s joys and sorrows. We would all be so hopeful during his brighter days, but darkness would inevitably follow. My father’s struggle with depression was cyclical, but always present, and the severity would ebb and flow.

And like many in my dad’s generation, especially men, he saw his depression as a sign of weakness rather than illness. He had been a lawyer and appellate court judge, and he was concerned that it would “get out.” While the medical profession viewed depression as a disease, the general public did not.

SALLY YATES PROFESSIONAL

My mother, sister and I had all urged him to get professional help, but he was worried about the stigma associated with psychological treatment. My father, then 56, had struggled with depression for years, and in the months leading up to his death, his suffering had been particularly acute. I knew that my father had taken his life. I intuitively knew that it wasn’t a car accident, heart attack, or other accidental death. He told me that my mother had called, and that my father had died. My friend knew that I was going to the local Kinko’s copy shop (another sign of the 1980’s) before returning to the library, and was waiting outside the shop when I arrived. This was in the days before the advent of cell phones, so there was no real way to track me down.

Sally yates