Group helps family members

     By Damon Hodge
     View staff writer
      When Linda Flatt's son Paul Tillander committed suicide five years ago, part of her died with him.
      The eternal question "Why?" buried with the 25-year-old laboratory technician, Flatt began torturing herself with questions: "What did I do wrong? Could I have been a better parent? Why did he do this?"
      Unable to get answers or emotional support from local suicide support groups, she created her own.
      For the last two years she's run Surviving Suicide, a bereavement program for adults. Between eight and 15 people show up for the meetings the first and third Tuesdays of the month at Central Christian Church, 3375 S. Mojave Road. Some come to find answers, others come for comfort and some come to save lives -- their own.
      "Survivors are prime candidates for suicide," said Flatt, explaining that her son's June 29, 1993 suicide put her on an emotional roller coaster.
      "You're mad at the person who died, your mad at people who knew the person and your mad at yourself," she said. "The guilt and unanswered questions eat at you. You don't know the answer to the 'Why' question, and you never will. You can get small answers but the big answer went to the grave."
      Flatt's main focus is getting survivors to place the responsibility of suicide on the victim. Initially, she had trouble restricting blame to her son.
      "I wondered where I had went wrong as a parent," she said.
      Flatt has since resolved that her son's suicide was of his own volition. She wishes she heeded the warning signs: Tillander had threatened suicide six months earlier and he was increasingly depressed. She believes gambling woes caused him to take chemicals from work and make the cyanide gas that killed him.
      At 25, Tillander was near the age suicide groups say is the most vulnerable. According to 1996 statistics from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, suicide is the third leading cause of death among people 15 to 34. The suicide rate for women 15 to 24 has doubled since 1950 and has tripled for men in the same age bracket.
      In 1995, the American Association of Suicidology reported Nevada as having the nation's highest suicide rate with 25.9 suicides per 100,000. There were 272 suicides in Clark County last year, according to the Clark County Coroner's office.
      The demographic of suicide victims is changing, though marginally. People 65 and older are committing suicide in higher-than-ever numbers, with the highest suicide rates reported in people older than 50.
      Flatt sees the demographic change in her group.
      "I have worked with several adults who have lost parents," she said.
      Women who have lost husbands and parents who have lost children comprise the bulk of membership. Flatt works to ensure participants feel welcome.
      "When my son died I tried to turn to places for help," she said. "It took me three months to find a group and the one group I found was difficult to get through to and wasn't very personable. I had to rely on family and friends for support."
      She'd facilitated support groups for abused women at her church for several years and thought a support group for survivors of suicide could be an extension of her recovery ministry. She started the group in May 1996 and set about helping adult survivors.
      "I felt I made mistakes as a parent but I eventually realized that this was his choice," she said. "I wanted to let other people know it was OK to grieve, but not to put all the blame on themselves.
      "Survivors of suicide need to be able to talk about it and deal with the emotions which come in waves," she continued, saying that she also helps families and friends deal with the history leading to the suicide. "The grieving process for suicide survivors is complicated. People are not only grieving a loss and but they're grieving the suicide, which was a conscious choice of the victim, and they're grieving about rejection and abandonment."
      What started as a support group has veered into activism.
      Earlier this year, Flatt attended a suicide conference in Colorado Springs, Colo. She joined hundreds of others, including Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., in Washington D.C. months ago for a national event promoting suicide awareness. She and Reid, whose father committed suicide 25 years ago, helped present a Life Keepers memory quilt, a collection of 28 quilts, to memorialize suicide victims.
      At an October suicide prevention conference in Reno, she met a couple who lost a child to suicide and who are building a suicide prevention program for youth in Washington. She wants to create a similar program in Nevada.
      Flatt also wants to craft state guidelines mirroring House and Senate resolutions recognizing suicide as a national problem and suicide prevention as a national priority. She is also backing Reid's effort to establish a federally funded Suicide Prevention Research Center at University Medical Center.
      "There are still relatively small amounts of resources available for prevention and after-care, but that's changing," said Flatt.
      "I started out with survivors in mind and had no intent of getting into prevention," she said, adding that hers is not a prevention group. "But working with survivors is prevention."
      Communication, she said, is key to preventing survivors from becoming victims.
      "People don't talk about suicide, so the problem remains in the dark," she said. "There's a societal stigma attached to it and people don't want to deal with it. We're not going to eradicate suicide, but with a better-educated public, maybe we can slow it down."
      Those interested in the program can call Flatt at 735-4004 or access her web site at www.sos.golflv.com.