A teenager diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, Mary Christina wrote this poem to express the confusion, sadness, and shame she experiences as a result of…
“Armatage Shanks” is a song written by Billy Joe Armstrong of the band Green Day when he was devastated after a break up and said…
“Don’t tell your Uber driver that you’re going to an orgy”—so begins Donte Collins’ poem “Grief Puppet”. Collins describes the experience of seeing his dead…
“As far back as I can remember, Michael was always good at being silly. He could make me laugh harder than anyone. He was very…
Mary Elizabeth Frye (1905 – 2004) was an American poet who is recognized for her first and perhaps only poem “Do Not Stand at My…
After 17 years of silence, Sue Klebold recounts that fateful day in Littleton, Colorado when her son Dylan and his friend Eric Harris committed one…
This series of in-depth interviews covers the difficulties that homeless men and women face with mental illness and drug abuse. A man named Cameron from…
The poem ‘Requiem’ by Anna Akhmatova documents the trauma and suffering of the Russian people under Joseph Stalin. The poem was conceived as she waited…
The R.E.M. song Everybody Hurts reaches out to those struggling with sadness, loneliness, despair, or thoughts of suicide, asking them to “Hold on”. The message…
When a father loses a child, his grief can sometimes be eclipsed by that of the mother’s. This poem by Eileen Knight Hagemeister describes how…
When she was 10 years old, Sarah wrote the original song “Dream Child” in memory of her young cousin who had died within of few…
Where do we draw the line between wishing for better fortune and using fantasy as escape? This question is at the heart of a recent…
In his poem, ‘Alone’, Edgar Allen Poe explores his feelings of solitude and isolation. Edgar Allen Poe has been known to suffer from feelings of…
Burning” by Cassandra Yanez-Layton to show what a mentally ill person feels as their mind is disoriented and their brain is experiencing a slow deterioration….
Rachel, a blogger on time-to-change.org, suffers from an unnamed mental illness. She wrote this poem in an effort to speak to the fear, discrimination, and…
In his TedTalk entitled “The Bridge Between Suicide and Life” Kevin Briggs speaks about his experience patrolling the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, a…
“The Black Pit” is one of the many written pieces featured in a book called FASCInATE – Friends of Alma St Centre Inspiring Action Towards…
“Jump They Say” written and performed by David Bowie is a song about Bowie’s brother, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and jumped from a building…
In “The Story of Ryan Anderson”, NBA star Ryan Anderson, talks candidly about losing his girlfriend to suicide in 2013. In the video, he discusses…
In the 1960s, guitarist/songwriter Paul Simon and singer Art Garfunkel wrote a song about suicide. On their surface, the lyrics explain that severe loneliness and…
