I personally didn’t put a lot of thought into stigma until this past experience with depression. For the most part, I always felt as if it was a word for those who didn’t deal with serious mental illness. Naturally people who can’t understand the depths of emotional despair and the wrenching heartache of “disconnectedness” automatically distance themselves from those of us who do. Click HERE to read the full essay.

• Both victims AND perpetrators of bullying are at a higher risk for suicide than their peers.
• Bullying, especially chronic bullying, has long-term effects on suicide risk and mental health that can persist into adulthood.

Suicide Prevention Programs Should Include:

• Student education
• Life skills training
• Activities to identify young people at risk of suicide (such as gatekeeper training and screening)
• Referrals / access to mental health services.

The following action steps may help create synergy in addressing both suicide and bullying:

• Start prevention early. Bullying begins at an age before many of the warning signs of suicide are evident. Early intervention may have significant benefits as children enter the development stage when suicide risk begins to rise.
• Keep up with technology. Bullying often takes places in areas hidden from adult supervision and the internet / social media has become such an area. Young people may also use social media to express suicidal thoughts.
• Pay special attention to the needs of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) youth and young people. LGBT youth attempt suicide at a rate 2-4 times higher than that of their heterosexual peers. It is essential to respond to the needs of these young people and provide a physically and emotionally safe environment.

For additional information, you can download the full brief HERE.

Why is this important? Because suicide is currently the 3rd leading cause of death among youth ages 15 to 24. Because every 16 minutes in this country, someone dies by suicide. And because it was personal. I lost my dad to suicide when I was 14 years old, and spent more than a decade in a very serious and suicidal depression following his death. I believed my life was worthless and I wanted to die. Out of fear and shame, I kept it to myself. 

Our main program of course is the assembly style presentation that I deliver to middle schools, high schools, and colleges. With your support, I have been to share my personal story with more than 36,000 teens and young adults since our humble beginnings in November 2007. These assemblies have been delivered to Macomb County schools at no charge and reach an average of 1,500 students each month.

Over this past summer, I have put that story to paper in detail. I wrote a short eBook titled “Building a Foundation for Happiness” which is available for free at detourproject.org. This journey has changed my life too, and I wanted to share what I’ve learned along the way with as many people as possible in the hopes that it will help. If you haven’t already done so, I hope that you will check out the book and help spread the word.

We have hosted three community walks to raise awareness for suicide prevention at Dakota High School and two walks at L’Anse Creuse High School North, involving hundreds of students and community members each time. These walks help break down the barriers of stigma and encourage conversations about something that not very long ago was considered extremely taboo. Each one of those conversations starts a dialogue that spreads and sends the message that this is something to be addressed, and no longer kept in silence.

Maryanne MacLeod from the Macomb Daily has written at least a dozen amazing articles about our efforts – putting this message out to more than 50,000 people in Macomb County with each article. Thank you to Maryanne and to everyone at The Macomb Daily for being such a huge part of this conversation!

It is impossible to accurately measure the results of our advocacy efforts. There is no concrete data to analyze. However, we have seen hundreds of letters, emails, and postings on the website come from the students we’ve been able to reach through the presentations with a common theme: “I was thinking about killing myself, nobody knew about it and now I know there is another way. Thank you.”

So if our mission is to raise awareness, educate, reduce stigma, and connect people to available resources and a new perspective, we have been tremendously successful and none of that would be possible without your support.

From the bottom of my heart, thank YOU. Thank you for attending and volunteering to help at our events, for making a financial contribution and for being a part of this conversation by helping us spread the word.

I would like to give a very special thank you to our Board Members for all that you do behind the scenes and for all you have done to help put our events together each year, and for making sure they run smoothly and successfully. It’s difficult to put into words how grateful I am for all of your help over the years

Gratefully,
- Dennis

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Please help us continue on our mission to reduce youth suicides! Suicide is the third leading cause of death for young people ages 15 to 24.Your contribution helps us educate an average of  1,500 teens and young adults each month about the facts, myths, risk factors and warning signs of suicidal behavior, what to do in crisis, and how to cope with distress. We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and your donation is tax-deductible.

If your prefer to make an offline contribution,
your tax-deductible donations can be mailed to:

KnowResolve
P.O. Box 380435
Clinton Township, MI 48035

Download a donation form

Thank you for your support!

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Over the weekend a friend asked for some advice. He told me that he’d really been struggling with some things lately and was looking for some tips to lighten the load. As I listened, I heard him acknowledge that he was having trouble setting boundaries and that he felt like he’d been living his life to make sure other people were happy and sacrificing his sense of self along the way. Read the full article HERE.

Please accept my heartfelt thanks for your support over the years. As we enter our 5th year of service, I wanted to take this moment to thank you for making our mission possible. By supporting our events, spreading the word, or helping through a financial contribution you make it possible for us to bring a message of hope to young people who are hurting. I hope that this holiday season finds you surrounded by the ones you love.

Gratefully,
- Dennis

We hope that you will join us on Saturday, November 19th for our 5th Annual “Breaking the Silence” benefit concert and dinner for suicide prevention!

Over the summer I wrote a short eBook called “Building a Foundation for Happiness”. While it only took a few months to put all the words together, this book is the culmination of the past 20 years of my life. It is based on and inspired by the presentations that I have been giving at schools for the past few years.

I’m very proud of this book, and I wanted to share it with you. If you’d like to check it out, it is available (as a free download) at www.detourproject.org. From this point forward, I’ll be using that website as a launching point for the book and to continue posting essays that further explore the concepts in the book. If you’re interested in reading the essays as I post them, you can subscribe by email or RSS on the main page.

KnowResolve’s mission of promoting mental health and reducing youth suicides does NOT change and will not be affected by the new direction of The Detour Project.

It’s been an incredible journey so far and I want to thank you for being a part of our story and for supporting our mission. I sincerely hope that you enjoy and are inspired by the book.

Feedback, comments and spreading of the word are all welcome and appreciated!

Gratefully,
- Dennis

Let me tell you about the monster who rides on my shoulders.

When Josh asked me to write a guest essay for The Minimalists, I was honored, but my mind totally blanked on ideas. So I decided there was only one thing to do: I would have to tell you about the monster who rides on my shoulders.

I can’t see him, but I know he is there. I sense that he is covered in mauve shag-carpet, has overly goggly eyes, and a gaping black maw with a felt tongue inside. I also sense that his name is Howard, but I could be wrong.

Howard is always on my back wherever I go, helpfully pointing out reasons I have to be unhappy and offering advice on things or experiences I could buy to make me happy again. I used to listen to Howard like a student at the feet of a trusted guru.

Back in 2008 before I moved to Austin, Texas, I took out a small loan to consolidate all of my credit card debt into one payment with the intention of immediately chopping up all my credit cards and never buying anything on credit again.

Once I was in Austin though I started to feel sad and lonely. Howard told me I would feel happy again if I spent $1,500 on a Panasonic mini DV camera, a 3 point light kit, and a boom mic. On credit, of course.

I made a short film, and it wasn’t very good. I was sad again. Howard told me what I really needed was an Appaloosa. So I pawned the brand new camera and bought a surly spotted horse who wasn’t even broke to ride.

I can’t lie. Captain did bring me happiness for a while. He did stave off the loneliness. But…a hamster probably would have sufficed. Do you know how much it costs to feed a horse? By April 2010, I had to sell Captain just to pay the rent for one month. As I watched Captain’s new family drive off into the sunset with him, I started to wonder if Howard had ever really had my best interests at heart.

I became more consciously aware of the things Howard was whispering in my ear. I started to think that maybe Howard was just making stuff up. Making up stuff for me to be unhappy about, and making up ludicrous, unrelated solutions for these perceived woes.

Does any of this sound familiar? If you’re a human being, then I’m guessing it does. Howard is a member of a prolific, parasitic species which infects most of the Western World.  The common name for this monstrous species is Discontentment.

These monsters attach themselves to us very early in our lives. Even before we can speak, they’ve begun spinning their lies in our ears. You don’t have enough. You are not enough. You need to own more. Do more. Be more. Let’s go shopping. Let’s get wasted. Let’s get laid. You’ll be happy in the morning. I promise.

Yet the promises never materialize. Whatever warm, fuzzy feelings you gain from the acquired object or experience fizzle out once the monster gets bored. The whispers start anew. Try something else. I bet a 62 inch TV would make you happy.

But enough about how lousy Howard and his family make us feel. Let’s talk about how to shut them up and shove them off our shoulders.

It’s easier than it feels. Here’s why:

Monsters don’t exist.

We can’t be controlled by something that isn’t even real.  That’s just silly!

We’ve been conditioned to believe that Discontent is a natural human state, or even a necessary factor in human progress. This, I believe, is a manufactured lie to keep us in need of things we never actually needed.

In our lives, we will experience discomfort. We will experience disasters. These are real and unavoidable parts of our existence. They teach us lessons and help us evolve, even when they hurt.

Discontent is a different beast. It offers us nothing we can truly use. It is a false promise of fulfillment around the next corner. Then the next and the next and the next until we find ourselves standing on a ledge with no more corners to turn.

But again, the good news: It’s not real. It’s not natural. It is not inevitable. You can debug your thought code.

The concept of enough is built into the earth. She provides everything we need. You don’t see discontent in the animal kingdom. Wild animals never take more than they need to survive. A healthy wolf that has just eaten will not kill again just because he can, just to prove how powerful or sexy or cool he is. If we would only follow in their footsteps, embrace the enough given to us by the earth, and accept that this is all we truly need—food, water, freedom, companionship—then we have a standard against which to measure the lies of Discontentment being whispered in our ears, and we gain the sanity to recognize them for what they are.

Then we can look Howard in the eye and say, “I can’t listen to you because you don’t exist.”

We usually have to repeat this a few times in a few different situations before Howard gets the point. Sometimes the nonsense they tell us will just be too appealing to resist. We might experience a lapse. Don’t be discouraged; this happens to all of us. We’re fighting hundreds of years of conditioning to be unhappy with our lot in life. But we can overcome it.

With enough time and practice, we can wake up one day with a lightness on our shoulders we didn’t know could exist. Howard has left the building. We can roll our shoulders, let out a big sigh of relief, look around at our lives and say, “Enough.”

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Afterward by Joshua Millburn: I first met Chase Night (yes, that is his real name) in Austin, Texas, when I drove to the SXSW conference in March 2011. He was kind enough to be my tour guide around his beautiful city. While in Austin, we ate plenty of fish tacos and talked about our fiction writing and what it means to live a more meaningful life. I encourage you to check out his website, Unbridled Existence, and follow him on Twitter. He is a gifted storyteller and one of the most talented writers on the internet.