Along the length of her left forearm Kelsey Mason, of Hamilton, has a tattoo that reads “warr;or.” The semi-colon in the word is an important symbol that indicates Mason is a survivor of a suicide attempt.
She says, “I would have missed a lot of memories with my close friends and my entire high school experience,” if she had not survived her suicide attempt in 2018.
The ; symbol was first used by the advocacy group Project Semicolon that supports mental health, particularly providing resources to help those with depression. The group explains in its literature that “a semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to.”
Suicide Prevention and Awareness month comes every September. With it comes many stories of survivors of attempted suicide and counselors, organizations and peers spreading information on how to prevent suicide.
Dr. Yannick Ladson, is the Senior Counselor at MCCC in Student Support Services. She can relate to students who are struggling because she is no stranger to personal difficulties.
In an interview on Medium.com in 2017 Ladson said, “I lived in a working class Black community in Raleigh, NC, but was the only Black student in my gifted classes. Everyday, I felt oppressed, marginalized, and voiceless. I endured daily microaggressions in the classroom and was bullied in my neighborhood for ‘acting white.’ I was from New York and was always reminded that I was different. I felt like Ariel in The Little Mermaid when her voice was taken.”
Dr. Ladson’s mentors encouraged her and eventually she ended up going all the way to graduate school and even doing stand up comedy. But life took a hard turn in the early 2000s as she suffered job instability, a break up, student debt, and health problems, and ended up having to apply for public assistance. But she managed to push through. She found work, paid off the creditors and finished her graduate degree.
Now Dr. Ladson’s work includes talking to students about a variety of issues, like an unstable home life, food insecurity, difficulty in classes and mental health struggles. She meets with students virtually or they can drop in to her office in SC 229 on Mondays with no appointment.
The Counseling Services website on mccc.edu describes other services available to help students, like phone chats with a licensed counselor and a new peer support app called “Talk Campus.”
The counseling department is also planning a de-stress week at the end of October that will offer in person and online events.
“We are constantly trying to connect to students in the hybrid world,” Ladson says.
According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the US and the 13th in New Jersey. According to New Jersey State Health Assessment Data, “The average annual suicide count among New Jersey residents is about 800 and there are more than twice as many suicides as homicides in the state.”
But survivors prove that there are ways to get help and get through the bad times.
Kelsey Mason reflects back on what it took her to move through her depression saying, “The tattoo says ‘warr;or’ and it means I was strong enough to overcome the thoughts and feelings I was dealing with which makes me a warrior for that.”
