By Vickie Aldous, Mail Tribune

Dana Green often thinks about the life she would have missed if she had died by suicide as a teen.

“I think about that a lot, actually. I would have never met my husband, and I’m tearing up just thinking about that, because he’s amazing. And I wouldn’t have had my son. And those are the joys of my life,” says the 35-year-old Ashland mother with a career in health care.

Beginning in her teenage years, Green was hospitalized several times for suicide attempts.

Her family had moved to Washington state and she had trouble adjusting to a big new high school. Normal teen experiences like breaking up with a boyfriend or arguing with a friend would send her into a tailspin. She was plagued by depression and anxiety.

Suicide seemed like a way out.

“I needed specific skills to get through those times without falling back on, ‘Oh, I should just commit suicide.’ It was kind of like a way of quitting, in a weird way. It was just like, ‘Well, I give up now. It’s just too much,’” she recalls.

It wasn’t until Green was 19 that she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

People with the disorder experience extreme emotions, have problems maintaining relationships and are at high risk of harming themselves and attempting suicide, according to mental health experts.

Green started therapy to help her cope with the symptoms. She eventually noticed it was working.

“A lot of time went by between me having suicidal ideation anymore. It was just like one day I thought to myself, ‘You know, it’s been a while since I’ve been in the hospital.’ And then I was able to maintain a relationship. And so I feel like that was crucial for me to having a life worth living,” she says.

Individual and group sessions helped her break through her isolation.

“It made a big difference in learning how to socialize with people in general,” Green says. “Because, you know, you’re depressed and you’re stuck in your house and not really communicating. So there’s at least that place where you can go and practice. It’s trial and error in a safe place.”

An important part of therapy was learning how to overcome her daily fears by facing them head-on. Sometimes that meant taking small steps, like going out to a store and seeing that nothing terrible would happen.

Other steps were harder, like telling other people about her past history of suicide attempts.

She remembers talking to her in-laws about those attempts.

“I was really terrified of them knowing my history,” Green says. “But it really helped to have them say that they accepted me and that they would recommend me sharing it with more people so it could help people.”

She has taken their advice to heart and is now speaking out. Green wants to help end the stigma associated with mental illness and suicide.

An active participant in the Southern Oregon chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Green testified before the Oregon Legislature this year about the need for increased access to mental health services for people in crisis.

She is taking NAMI’s In Our Own Voice training so she can give presentations about mental health and suicide awareness, with a goal to share her story at Southern Oregon University and Rogue Community College.

“I was really a success story and I thought, ‘Well, maybe I should tell people about it,’” Green says.

NAMI, which offers support groups and information for mentally ill people and their families, is a key part of her support network.

At work, Green says her experiences with depression, anxiety and isolation help her be more attuned to the feelings and needs of her elderly patients.

Familiar with the hidden struggles so many people are enduring, she says her approach to life is to be kind to everyone.

Green has a message for those considering suicide.

“I would say that you can have a life worth living and that you’re worth it and that things do get better. Things always get better. If you just hang in there, you’ll see. You are so worth your life and you’ll want to live it. So stick with treatment. Get help. Tell someone you need help. There’s a lot of beautiful things to see,” she says.

This month, newsrooms across Oregon are highlighting the public health crisis of death by suicide. The goal of the collaborative project, “Breaking the Silence,” is to not only put a journalistic spotlight on a problem that claimed the lives of more than 800 Oregonians last year, but also examine research into how prevention can and does work. We hope to offer our readers, listeners and viewers resources to help if they–or those they know–are in crisis. Most of our work will be published and broadcast April 7-14. The participating media outlets are using a common set of data and have loosely coordinated their coverage in an effort to avoid duplication and better amplify all of our work. The work will be added to breakingthesilenceor.com as it is published.