BOULDER, Colo. — A mother and father in Boulder are sharing the heartbreaking story of losing their son, in hopes of reshaping how people think about suicide.
Jordana Ash and Oliver Lignell worked alongside Healthier Colorado, a Denver non-profit, to share information about acute suicidality in a recent report.
"We didn't know he didn't know how acute the risk was. Because, in a sense, we had some misinformation about how these things can sometimes happen," Oliver said.
Jordana and Oliver's son, Maddy, graduated from college, landed a job at SpaceX, and had an incredibly close relationship with his parents and two sisters. According to Jordana and Oliver, Maddy didn't previously struggle with his mental health.
Just two weeks after accepting a new job in Seattle, Jordana and Oliver said they noticed signs of exhaustion in Maddy.
"He looked off like his face looked flush, and he just told us he hadn't been sleeping very well. And he looked, he was talking rationally, but he looked like he wasn't feeling well," Jordana said. "He was trying to make sense of things, but ultimately they didn't make sense. And that was, as parents and as his sisters, that worried us a lot, but he was doing all the right things. He was calling me. He was wondering out loud about this."
Shortly after seeing his struggles, Jordana and Oliver flew out to visit Maddy. They found him a psychiatrist and kept him company.
"Sunday was Mother's Day, and he died six days later. So that gives you a sense of how rapid this unfolded and this tragedy happened," Jordana said.
In the years following the loss of Maddy, his parents learned about what's called acute suicidality, and how the symptoms can come on within days, hours or minutes — even if thoughts of suicide never crossed a person's mind before.
Now they're leading the way alongside Christina Walker, the senior director of policy at Healthier Colorado, to make sure this discovery becomes more common knowledge among Coloradans and the world.
"I think there's a lot of work we need to do to raise public awareness, as well as to train folks who are doing this work, either from the prevention, intervention or treatment lens, so that we can make sure that we're capturing everyone who shows up with a level of suicidality," Walker said. "Those symptoms, are something that really can help people who are showing up at emergency rooms or at primary care doctors, that can really help them understand, oh, maybe this is a warning sign, and we might need to dig a little deeper and see if there's something else going on."
One of their solutions is listing a more specific diagnosis for "suicidality" in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM). It's what mental health professionals use to diagnose patients.
"They currently don't have a diagnosis in there for suicide specificity or acute suicidality," Walker said. "Right now, there's just one DSM diagnosis that says somebody has attempted suicide within the past two years. So that's something that somebody would have only if they've attempted in the last two years."
In the meantime, they're continuing to push to reach folks who they fear will fall through the cracks.
If you're experiencing thoughts of suicide, text or call 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You will be connected with a counselor from across the U.S. and your conversation will remain confidential.
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