Before All Hope Is Lost

By Adam McKibbin, WireTap. Posted March 27, 2006.

This month, an unusual assemblage will make a return pilgrimage to Capitol Hill, appearing before the press and logging face time with congressmen, all with one goal in mind -- increasing funding for suicide prevention. On March 1, punk band Matchbook Romance -- along with 11 other bands -- and their Take Action! tour mates began a two-month trek across the country, raising money and awareness for a quiet, misunderstood epidemic.

Before the tour kicked off, fans got their hands on the annual Take Action! compilation, a two-disc affair stuffed with 44 songs -- some unreleased -- from the likes of Sugarcult, Against Me!, Cursive, Hawthorne Heights, Lagwagon and many more.

While the names of the bands on Take Action! CDs are changing from year to year, two men behind the project are constants -- the National Hopeline Network founder Reese Butler and Hopeless and Sub City Records founder Louis Posen. Butler and Posen will be speaking alongside Sen. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., during the conference on Capitol Hill, and their joint efforts have helped make the Take Action! tour a shining example of all the good that can occur when music and activism cross paths.

But nobody is resting on their laurels. How could they? Not with kids in the United States between the ages of 10 and 24 taking their lives at an alarming rate of one every two hours. The suicide statistics are alarming; the prevention statistics are infuriating. As recently as 2000, the federal government allocated zero dollars to fund suicide prevention programs. In part because of the public efforts of the Take Action! tour -- and the 100,000 plus petitions the tour has brought back to Washington -- Congress has finally put it into the budget. But, in the grand scheme of D.C. spending, the crisis is merely getting chump change thrown at it.

"This year, it's a whopping 16 million [dollars]," says Butler. "That may sound like a lot to some people, but, to put it in context, we just appropriated 17 billion to fight AIDS in Africa. I am not against helping save every man, woman and child everywhere on the planet, but if we can come up with 17 billion to help reduce the AIDS epidemic in Africa, do you think we might be able to come up with a billion for suicide prevention in America? We're talking about a disease that literally takes more lives than homicide and AIDS combined in the U.S."

Unfortunately, Congress has been slow to act -- after a long period of not acting at all. Two members who have become important allies to the movement are Sens. Kennedy and Gordon Smith, R-Ore. As is often the case, it became a lot easier to gain traction once Congress had its own personal stories to tell.

"The one that sticks out most in my mind is Patrick Kennedy, who admits himself to being bipolar," Posen says, recalling last year's assembly on Capitol Hill. "He mentioned that in the last three years, three members of Congress have had kids commit suicide. So why is it so difficult for this group of people to realize that this is an important issue, and that funds should be allocated? The Surgeon General has said that this is the most preventable form of death."

"If I was to take Patrick Kennedy's perspective and flush it out," Posen continues, "I'd say that [suicide prevention] is not getting federal funding because there is a stigma against mental health. When you see someone on the street acting crazy and weird, you run from them. When you see someone bleeding, you run to them. That's kind of what's been going on with Congress as far as funding goes."

Butler agrees wholeheartedly. Prior to his founding of the National Hopeline Network and the Kristin Brooks Hope Center -- named after his wife, who died by suicide in 1998 -- there was no networking of crisis centers nationwide. Not only were there no resources, but there was no initiative and no leadership. By the time Posen and his Take Action! tour came looking for a partner, Butler was running the only game in town -- a confidential 24-hour service that linked crisis centers together, a true national suicide hotline.

"Mental health has traditionally been the stepchild of the health arena," Butler says. "You wouldn't even find it in the public health arena; it would be shunted off to asylums and then state institutions and then eventually community mental health centers. We always want to separate the brain from the body."

Butler tells the story of polling a group of 100 clinicians at the time he was starting his organizations, asking them what toll-free number they provided to patients for when the doctors were not available. While all 100 doctors insisted that there was a crisis hotline, none could provide the number -- because there wasn't one.

The Take Action! Tour continues through April 26. To view a complete tour schedule, visit TakeActionTour.com website.

To support or learn more about the National Hopeline Network, visit their website at Hopeline.com.

Adam McKibbin is an editor of TheRedAlert.com.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »