Suicide survivor helps her peers

In 2000, 282 people killed themselves in Clark County. Year after year, Nevada has the worst suicide rate in the nation, more than twice the national average.

One woman out to make a difference is Linda Flatt, a dental hygienist whose son Paul took his life when he was 25. Paul was a lab technologist who worked with the Environmental Protection Agency. He took home chemicals, mixed them to make cyanide gas and inhaled the fumes. He found a release from earthly life.

Flatt found a quagmire of guilt.

"I felt as a mother I'd failed him," she said. "For three years on a daily basis, I asked 'Why?' "

The suicide took place in June 1993. The last time Flatt saw her son was a few weeks before. They were at an aunt's funeral and Flatt encouraged him to come back to the house where relatives would gather after the service.

He refused, saying he was "too depressed." Flatt said she didn't think the remark was out of place, seeing as they were at a funeral. It was one of those incidents over which she would later torture herself with "What ifs?"

Another incident, six months before he committed suicide, was when Paul's girlfriend wanted to break up. He said he'd kill himself if she left him. The girlfriend told Flatt, who immediately went to talk with her son.

"He said he was just kidding," she said. "And I believed him."

The happy memories of Paul include his high school graduation and his birthday parties. But Flatt recalled how her son was troubled, sensitive, irresponsible, unable to make sound choices. Looking back, she said she suspects he may have had an attention deficit disorder.

"After he was in the Navy, he came back and talked a good game," she said. "He said he was going to go back to school, keep up his grades, get a good job. That lasted about two weeks."

To work through her pain, she collected information on suicide off the Internet, read books on the subject, attended a conference on suicide in Reno. Three years after Paul's death, she felt "as close to normal as I was ever going to feel."

She emerged to create a bereavement group which she now facilitates, is a member of the Southern Nevada Community Organizer for the Suicide Prevention Advocacy Network and a charter member of the Nevada chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Flatt is working to get Nevada's government to implement a state-wide suicide strategy. But it is her bereavement group where she has a chance to touch people's lives on a one-to-one basis.

"There is so much stigma, so much embarrassment that surrounds this issue," she said. "Unless the people around you have experienced it, they don't know how to help. The emotions are a lot bigger. The anger is bigger and the guilt is bigger because it (the suicide) was done by choice."

The group she facilitates meets at Central Christian Church, 1001 New Beginnings Drive, the first and third Tuesday of each month from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Central Christian Church can be reached at 735-4004. Its sister church, Canyon Ridge, at 6200 W. Lone Mountain Road, has a similar program which meets the second and fourth Monday of each month from 7 to 8:30 p.m. The Canyon Ridge number is 658-2722.

Nevada has a crisis line that operates 24 hours. Its number is (877) 885-4673.


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