Brandi Care, an advocate for depression awareness, visited Hopkins on Sunday to share her experiences with a failed suicide attempt and the revelations that resulted from her survival. She has told her story to a national audience on Oprah, Good Morning America and Dateline NBC.
The event was hosted by A Place To Talk, Johns Hopkins' peer counseling group, housed in the lobby of AMR I.
Care began by showing a video of her appearance on Dateline NBC, which told the story of her failed suicide attempt and how she overcame her bout with depression.
She had been class president her junior year of high school, the captain of the field hockey team and a swimming instructor. She had always gotten good grades, and her parents never realized that she was secretly fighting with depression.
During her junior year, however, Care began feeling sad and tired of life. She was tired of field hockey, which she had loved growing up, and was growing sick of student government. She began overeating and oversleeping, and began contemplating ways she could kill herself.
Finally, in May of 1998, at the end of her junior year, the idea came to her. Her family was going to the annual Chesapeake Bay Bridge walk, over the Chesapeake Bay near Annapolis, Md. They invited her to attend, but she told them she had work to do. After they left, however, she realized that jumping off the bridge would be a quick and painless way to take her life. Later that day, she drove to the bridge, and jumped 100 feet to the bay below. "I got this tunnel vision. I didn't think twice. I didn't think about what would happen tomorrow when I wasn't there," Care said.
She had expected to fall unconscious immediately upon hitting the water, and to sink to the bottom, but miraculously, she was unharmed by the fall. Once she hit the water, her survival instinct kicked in, and she was fighting to stay above the water. A passing boat found her and rescued her.
Care then told the story from her own point of view. She described how she had been feeling in school her junior year.
"Things just drastically changed -- not on the outside, but on the inside," she said.
Outwardly, she looked like the same successful, happy teenager, she commented. But inside, she had a hopeless feeling that she couldn't get rid of.
Her sophomore year was marked by activity and a strong social life, but in her junior year, things became very different.
Care described a typical day in this period of her life: "I'd wake up five minutes before school would start, usually get there late, leave early if I could, go home, eat a big snack, take a long nap, eat dinner, shower and then go back to bed."
Nobody around her noticed this change, because she sought to appear happy while she in fact felt depressed. Her parents thought she was oversleeping because she was tired from sports.
It was not until after attempting suicide that Care realized she was suffering from depression. "Before that day, depression never came to mind. I thought depression was just a state of mind that people went through -- not a disease."
After her suicide attempt, however, she was placed in a psychiatric facility. It was here that she realized she was suffering from a disease. "I had every symptom for depression," she said.
After diagnosing Care with depression, doctors put her on medication; Paxil in her case. She commented the medication was very helpful, allowing her to think rationally. Depression masks a person's true feelings and thoughts, and Paxil helped to reverse this, she added
Care now fights for awareness about depression among young adults. One of the most dangerous aspects of depression is how it can creep up on people unnoticed, Care noted. Victims of depression often blame themselves or others for their feelings, but never stop to consider that they might have depression.
In Care's case, had she been more aware of the nature of the disease, she may have been able to get control of it before attempting suicide. Care's mother also suffers from depression, which put her at a higher risk to have the disease. She concluded her discussion by warning college students not too take on more responsibility than they can handle, one of the things that she believes caused her breakdown in high school.
"My hope is that people, if they start feeling these symptoms, will think and relate to my story, and be able to talk about it and get help," Care said.
