The AFSP’s (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention) event “The 4th Annual Out Of The Darkness Walk” will take place on Saturday September 13th beginning at 9:30 am. at Neahwa Park in Oneonta. The purpose is to raise awareness and be a voice for changing the stigma of suicide as well as bring families together to help heal each other.

A group of people will be remembered… a group that suffered from mental illness and died by suicide. They will be remembered by those they left behind as casualties of mental diseases such as Depression or Schizophrenia or Anxiety Disorders among a host of other ailments of the mind.

My guess is that if you looked around at your circle of friends, co-workers, neighbors or even one of your own family members, you would be hard pressed not to find someone that struggles with mental disease.

Although a great majority of those who experience a mental illness do not die by suicide, of those people who die by suicide 90% have a diagnosable mental disorder. In fact in 2011 (the most recent year for data) someone died by suicide once every 13.3 seconds in the U.S.

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