Hope and healing

UCA-Hendrix join to have suicide-awareness walk

Ryan Brady, left, Hendrix College co-chairman of the Out of the Darkness Walk for Suicide Prevention, pretends to walk with University of Central Arkansas walk co-chairs Tori Doll and Josh Sisco. The walk will be March 31 at UCA, which started the first campus walk in Arkansas in 2011. This year, Hendrix joined the effort. Registration and information are available at afsp.org.
Ryan Brady, left, Hendrix College co-chairman of the Out of the Darkness Walk for Suicide Prevention, pretends to walk with University of Central Arkansas walk co-chairs Tori Doll and Josh Sisco. The walk will be March 31 at UCA, which started the first campus walk in Arkansas in 2011. This year, Hendrix joined the effort. Registration and information are available at afsp.org.

University of Central Arkansas student Josh Sisco of Clinton needed help to cope with the suicide of a close friend, and Sisco found support through the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Now he wants to show others the way.

Sisco is co-chair of the UCA-Hendrix Out of the Darkness Walk for Suicide Prevention — the first year for the two schools to join in the event — scheduled for 10 a.m. to noon March 31, starting at the UCA Amphitheater. Online registration is underway through March 30 at afsp.org or in person beginning at 9 a.m. the day of the walk.

Speakers will include UCA President Houston Davis, as well as loss survivors and those who have attempted suicide, Sisco said.

“I lost one of my best friends to suicide in October,” Sisco said. She was a 23-year-old UCA student.

“It wasn’t even a year that I’d known her. We were just the best of friends, hung out together, went on hikes — literally spent every day together. She was the coolest person.”

Sisco said he didn’t see any signs that she had problems, and he had trouble coping with her death.

“It was just something out of the blue. That’s why it threw a lot of us off and everything,” he said.

“I was looking around and saw the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. It gave me so much information about how to cope, basically what to do,” he said. “It made me more comfortable, gave me the help I needed, and it was perfect.

“I knew right then and there I wanted to join the AFSP to help,” and honor his friend.

He said the website has links to resources for loss survivors, including support groups, which he attended.

“It was such a great help because I had no idea how to handle this,” he said. “I also watched the documentaries that were there [on the website], and they gave me hope and comfort.”

Sisco found information about the Out of the Darkness Walk and became a member of the junior board of the suicide foundation’s Arkansas chapter. He was asked to co-chair the UCA-Hendrix walk with Tori Doll, residential student-conduct coordinator at UCA.

“I wanted to help spread the word and be an advocate,” Sisco said.

Ryan Brady of Dallas, a junior at Hendrix College, also joined the foundation’s junior board. He is a health-science major on the pre-med tract.

“I expressed my interest in making it a joint walk [with Hendrix College],” Brady said after he heard about the UCA walk.

“I lost my cousin to suicide in June this past year,” he said. “We were very close, so it was very hard on me and our family.”

Brady said representatives of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention made a presentation to Hendrix College, and afterward, he talked with Mary Meacham, chairwoman for the foundation board’s programs and services committee. In 2011, she helped organize the first Out of the Darkness Walk at UCA. It was the first such campus walk in Arkansas, organizers said at the time.

Meacham’s son, UCA nursing student Kyle Meacham, died by suicide in 2010.

“I talked to her about my experience and said I wanted to get involved and, hopefully, try to prevent people from experiencing what I experienced,” Brady said.

Community and campus walks are the foundation’s primary fundraisers, according to the group’s website. Sisco said sponsors are being solicited for the walk. Donations may also be made to individual walkers or teams at afsp.org.

‘Most of the money comes back to the Arkansas chapter,” Doll said.

Brady said raising money is one of his goals, but it’s not the one closest to his heart.

“Part of me wants to raise a lot of money and be able to spread awareness to as many people as possible, ” Brady said, “and personally, I honestly just want to help people who might be going through similar situations.

“I want to break the stigma of [suicide], to get people talking about it so it’s not as much an under-the-carpet deal.”

Doll said she thinks it’s a great idea for both schools to walk together.

“We were happy to get more help,” she said. “We’ve sent out a couple of email blasts to the whole school, so we’re hoping to have a little bit of everybody attend.”

Sisco said anyone is welcome to walk.

“Our main goal is just to spread awareness, save lives and bring hope to those affected by suicide,” Sisco said.

Information on suicide and suicide prevention will be available at the walk.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among people ages 15 to 24. In 2015, according to afsp.org, there were 44,193 reported suicide deaths each year in the United States, one every 12.8 minutes.

The foundation has set a goal to reduce the annual suicide rate 20 percent by 2025, according to the foundation’s website.

Sisco said he’s learned that “talk saves lives — noticing that someone is just not being themselves; break through the awkward conversation: ‘I noticed you haven’t been yourself lately,’ or if you’ve been noticing toxic behaviors, less social life, more drinking,” he said.

Something else Sisco said he learned through his loss “is no matter how you choose to deal with your grief, you should not have to cope with your loss alone. Be open to letting people help you live through this experience.”

And that’s why he’s inviting people to walk.

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansas

online.com.

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