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September is suicide awareness month and Wyoming has the highest suicide rate per capita in the country. A new documentary that will be shown in Rock Springs, Casper, Gillette, Lander, and Jackson this month showcases the impacts, attitudes, challenges, and possible solutions that suicide has on the state. Wyoming Public Radio’s Hugh Cook spoke with Brooke Schmill, who created "Turning Point: Ending Suicide in Wyoming."
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Hugh Cook: How did you get involved with suicide prevention and how did you come about producing this documentary?
Brooke Schmill: Like a lot of young people in Wyoming, I graduated high school in 2008. In 2005, between my ninth and tenth year of high school, I lost my first friend to suicide. He was 15. And I just sort of kept going on. I had lost my mother that same year, so it was just a really hard year for me. I went to film school after high school. When I was 21, there was a lot of news in Wyoming about the high suicide rates. I just couldn't believe [it], I think maybe because I was just young, and it was all new to me learning about life in that way.
I made my first short documentary. When people see it, I'm going to rerelease it later this year, it's very rough, it's [my] very first film, but I traveled around the state and had these deep conversations with people. And then I just sort of felt that, I assumed, the state would get it under control because it was so bad. And then 10 years later, I was in Wyoming again visiting my family and it was a historically bad year for high suicide rates. And I had a bunch of people from my first film reach out to me to tell me about it, because I think that they just had me in mind as someone who would listen, and so I got the idea to make a follow up film.
HC: What was the title of your first documentary?
BS: "I only Cry in the Rain." It was the title of the poem a young woman who I featured in that documentary wrote. She was 19 and she had opened up to me about all of the reasons she had become suicidal as a teenager and she is a suicide survivor. So I thought that was an impactful name, because it really shows there's a lot of people in Wyoming [who] don't like to show their emotions. I think that's something that's a larger conversation, but I thought it was an impactful title.
HC: What did you find out when you were talking with your interview subjects?
BS: Every single person in Wyoming has some sort of loss or opinion. When I traveled around, almost every single person I talked to, even if it was just someone I just happened to meet, has some sort of story or personal experience about suicide. Whether that was feeling suicidal themselves or losing a loved one. The impacts on the communities are just astounding once you start talking to people. And everyone wants to know why, everyone wants to know how it can end, everyone has their hypothesis about why it's happening, everyone has something to say about it. And it seems like there's nowhere to talk about it. The people who I've met who do suicide prevention, they're just heroes in every community because they're willing to say, ‘I'm here, I want to talk about it with you.’ But, for the most part, people seem to have the idea that this is just the way it is and this is just the way Wyoming is, and they think it's very sad, but they don't really feel like it's going to change. That's sort of the general tone I've gotten. And for my interviews, in my experience talking to people, I know that that isn't true. I know things can change. I believe it because I've seen people who've changed. And I think that once people get comfortable expressing their own journey, it's healing.
HC: When you were producing your documentaries, how many folks did you talk to about suicide?
BS: It was very exciting. I sort of just winged it for two months. I said 'I'm going to Wyoming,' and I had a plan of where I was traveling around the state. I interviewed the woman for my first film - she lives in the Rock Springs/Green River area. And then I went to Casper, Gillette, Riverton and Lander, Jackson and Laramie. And in each of those places, I interviewed people who have lost their children: a coroner, a sheriff, a mayor, people who are volunteers, and then people who have struggled with mental health themselves.
HC: What was the reception from the people that you interviewed? Were they open to talking about this? Or did you have to kind of pry them to give information? What was kind of the feel that you got when you were producing it?
BS: It's such a deeply personal topic for people and there were definitely people who I feel like, in the short amount of time I asked them to interview, they just hadn't really built trust with me yet, so I respected that. And then there's some people who I just wish I could have had more time to get to know who I would have liked to interview. But, for the most part, the general attitude when I was interviewing people is frustration that things don't seem to be changing. Everyone in Wyoming knows it’s rural. I say the things that make Wyoming so great can also be the things that make it problematic. There's a general lack of resources in every community or people, they don't know how to be connected to the resources. Sometimes small communities, you know everyone, you just don't want people to know your business. And there's really no choice because you know everyone and people talk. Especially for young kids, it's really hard for them to get inpatient care when they are needing more advanced help than what their parents can offer them or just a counselor. That's very frustrating for a lot of people. The sheriff in Jackson explained that sometimes when people need to be detained because they're a danger to themselves, they have to wait in jail because there's no other place to put them. And so it's just really sad that people are wanting to help them, people are asking for help, but the resources haven't really caught up yet.
HC: From your perspective, what needs to happen here in Wyoming to decrease suicide rates?
BS: First of all, I think that everyone in the state can take action today by completely changing the way they think about this. It's a crisis. And because the numbers have not changed drastically, the current messaging is obviously not reaching [the] people that it needs to reach. And there is the number 988. That's free, 24/7 confidential support, and I personally support reaching out to a stranger because they don't have any sort of bias about your life or judgment. I also think that the reasons people become suicidal are very complex, and they vary person to person, and it's very painful and challenging to talk about these reasons in depth. But once you do you realize that you're not alone, that there are people who can offer suggestions and help for getting you out of that mind state.
