AKRON, Ohio - On April 25, 1995, Beth Wood took about 40 painkillers with alcohol and went to bed. To her dismay, she was discovered by her then-boyfriend early the next morning and rushed to the hospital. She lived.
Each year, about 30,000 Americans are not so lucky.
And with the arrival of spring, mental health experts have been bracing themselves for a spike in the number of suicides.
For most people, spring is a season of hope, a time of renewal and rebirth.
But for some, it is a season of despair. More Americans kill themselves in the spring than at any other time of the year. Suicide rates normally spike in April and again in summer. Contrary to popular belief, suicide rates drop during the winter holiday season.
An average of 80 Americans kill themselves each day. That's one person every 18 minutes.
In 1999, the most recent year for which national statistics are available, 29,199 Americans committed suicide. That same year, there were 16,899 homicides in the United States.
Another 730,000 people tried to kill themselves in 1999 but were not successful. An estimated 5 million living Americans, like Wood, have attempted suicide at some point in their lives.
For all the public awareness campaigns - for instance, May is designated as Suicide Prevention Month - many myths still surround the issue. The American Association of Suicidology tries to combat them by presenting such facts as these:
-The majority of suicides - 72 percent - are committed by white men.
-White men over age 85 have the highest suicide rate - 59 per 100,000.
-Suicide is the third-leading cause of death among young people ages 15 to 24, following accidents and homicide. The rate in this age group is 10.3 per 100,000.
-Men commit suicide four times more than women, but women attempt suicide three times more than men.
-The strongest risk factors for attempted suicide in adults are depression, alcohol abuse, cocaine use, and separation or divorce.
-The strongest risk factors for attempted suicide in young people are depression, alcohol or drug use, and aggressive or disruptive behaviors.
Experts are not sure why spring becomes a season of death for so many people, but they have some guesses.
``In the spring, they expect they'll feel better,'' said Barb Medlock, who runs the support hot line at Portage Path Behavioral Health in Akron. ``And they don't. It's a disappointment on top of other life stresses. It increases their hopelessness.''
Wood, a 38-year-old Akron resident, recalls how depressed she was before her suicide attempt.
``There was nothing to do, nowhere to go,'' Wood said. ``I was horribly depressed, but I was the most functional depressed person you'll ever meet. I would go to work, do what I had to do.''
She had been contemplating suicide for at least six months before her attempt that April.
``The birds are singing, flowers blooming, life is regenerating,'' she said. ``You feel, `How come my life isn't coming along, how come I'm not growing?' ''
At the time of her attempt, Wood was living with her boyfriend. She had quit her job, her finances were a mess and she had been estranged from her family for a year. She was convinced that ``nobody would miss me because I turned into such a worthless person.''
Medlock said many suicides are a cry for help, but that cry may be as vague as a statement like, ``I just don't know if I can deal with this anymore.''
``The important message is that 90 percent of people have some emotional problem that's treatable,'' she said. ``People live their lives and run into emotional problems they can't solve. Their coping skills are not good. Hopelessness builds and they think this is a way of getting away from pain.''
Wood has been on both sides of the suicide continuum. She cringes at the memory of waking up in the hospital and seeing her family standing around her bed. She had believed that killing herself would make it easier for them to go on with their lives. One look at their stricken faces told her otherwise.
Her family stood by her. So did her friends, including one who killed himself last year.
``Prior to my friend's death, I would've said everybody has the choice to take his own life,'' Wood said. ``I have a different take on this now. I think suicide is stupid and selfish.''
Yet she remembers how distorted her thinking was at the time.
``You don't feel it's selfish when you're in that place,'' she said. ``You're thinking you're going to make things better (for the people around you).''
Ellen Botnick of Copley, Ohio, is proof that isn't true. Her daughter, Lisa, a 15-year-old sophomore at Revere High School, killed herself in October 2000.
``I still think about her with every breath I take,'' Botnick said. ``I think about the magic she had in everything she touched. I feel very much alone and something's missing.''
In her daughter's memory, Botnick is planning on participating in the Out of the Darkness walk that will commence in Fairfax, Va., on Aug. 17. Participants will walk 26 miles and arrive in Washington, D.C., the next day.
She is making the walk ``to raise awareness. The whole issue (of suicide) is cloaked in silence. This silence has to be broken. People can be helped.''
On the first anniversary of her suicide attempt, Wood's mother bought her a ring.
``I look at it as my second birthday,'' Wood said. ``It was the day I was able to start again.''
Which is not to say the climb back has been easy. After leaving the hospital, Wood went into a residential treatment program for two weeks and then moved in with her mother for a time. She received therapy for months.
``The suicide attempt was the best thing that ever happened to me,'' she said. ``It gave me a chance to ask for help.''
(c) 2002, Akron Beacon Journal (Akron, Ohio).