Anatomy of an End - Episode 2: William - Between Two Lives

In this episode of Anatomy of an End, we examine the life and death of William, a respected corrections clinician whose apparent suicide revealed a hidden life that few, even those closest to him, knew existed.

As we reconstruct William's psychological landscape, we explore the relationships, decisions, and competing narratives that emerged after his death. Was he a devoted father and clinician who became trapped in a life of secrecy? A predator who concealed his true nature for decades? Or a vulnerable man manipulated by someone he believed he could trust?

While no psychological autopsy can determine exactly what happened, it can illuminate the patterns, pressures, and possibilities that traditional investigations often overlook.

To understand how a life ends, we must first understand how it was lived.

This episode contains discussion of suicide, mental illness, intimate relationships, and death.

If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 in the United States or contact your local crisis service.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Anatomy of an End, a podcast where we retrace the final days of those lost to suicide through the lens of forensic psychological autopsy. Each episode, we take a step back through time to understand what was happening beneath the surface and what might have brought someone to the edge. Our goal is not to cast dispersions or assign blame, rather, we want to understand. We hope to shine a light on warning signs, missed opportunities, and the delicate complexity behind these all-too common tragedies. This series contains discussion of suicide, drug use, and mental illness. Listener discretion is advised. I'm doing pretty good, Davis. How are you? I'm good. I'm excited that we've we've released our first episode, so it's out there in the it's in the ether now, and we've gotten a really positive response so far, you know, and from the individuals that I've had the opportunity to engage with on social media of various forms, it really does seem like we are entering a space where there is a vacuum for this kind of helpful conversation surrounding the topic of suicide.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

I agree, and I've I've looked at some of those interactions that uh that you've shared with me, and it it's uh they're very heartfelt and they should be listened to and they should be taken seriously because the nature of this type of loss, uh, as we've said before, is very different than any other type of loss in our life. And uh we hope to help people find ways to mitigate that loss and maybe help people avoid such loss as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Certainly, absolutely. And I wanna I want to point out that I do mention in the first episode of our Susan kind of I guess you could call it a trilogy, episode one, part one, two, and three. I reference an episode. I say in the last episode we talked about some statistics. I just want to shed some light on that. We had recorded a episode that was our first episode, but I felt like it wasn't up to the standards of the previous three that we did about Susan. So we're we will probably in the future come back to recording like more of a nebulous, all-encompassing episode about suicide statistics, myths, and stigmas if you'd be if you'd be up for that.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Oh, absolutely. And we need to know about these things. Uh, I think most people are quite surprised when they hear the real statistics. Uh, and they're available out there. I encourage people to look at the statistics in their particular counties across the United States. There, they are kept across their statewide, uh, statewide statistics are kept as well. And you can look at uh uh various um organizations uh that that keep such statistics, and I think it's important to know them. But I don't think that we need to go into each and every one. I think they'll come up organically through our conversations.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Sure, absolutely. And you know, our last uh our last episode again was about Susan R. who took her own life in prison, or I'm sorry, in jail rather, in in 1997 at the age of 23. So this was an institutionalized individual. She, by all accounts, was not a very pleasant person. She was rather difficult, but I think the theme of that episode was was along the lines of it's not always individuals who are gentle when they're drowning that require this sort of meaningful outreach. It's and and that's some people present pain as hostility and aggression and and prideful vengeance. But uh today we're gonna be transitioning into a different type of individual, kind of kind of uh uh different in a lot of ways. And and Dana, this this gentleman's name was William. And would you mind just giving us a little bit of a backstory about this case before we dive too deep into it?

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Before I go forward, I just want to add to something you just said is very important. I'm glad you said that, that you know, uh it's not always the drowning person that ri needs our empathy, that needs our help. Uh sometimes someone is drowning and then it doesn't look like drowning. It looks like anger, it looks like hostility. And uh nonetheless, they do need the help. I can tell you that you're gonna hear us say this quite a few times uh as we go along through all of our episodes, and that is let's get rid of what we think a suicidal or potentially suicidal person must look like before we can help them, or before we engage or intervene, because there is no set way or set person that that you know that's gonna be suicidal. There's a stigma or rather a myth, you know, that we think um stereotypical suicidal person would be sitting on the edge of a bridge, would be crying all the time, would be sad, uh, and so on. And that may be true in many cases, but it's not always true, and that's why many times these type of events come with such surprise to people. In this case today, we have an an individual who's actually a clinician, a psychotherapist, a well-seasoned psychotherapist of over 25 years working in a frontline high acuity situation within a county jail. Here we are with a person who keeps people from killing themselves, keeps people from deters people rather from um, you know, the ideas of suicide and tries to help them find help for depression or whatever uh psychological or emotional issues that are pushing them towards that behavior, self-harm. And yet he dies by suicide.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

And could you speak into this? This is this is a very interesting topic. Mental health providers they they can struggle with mental health issues as well.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Yeah, there's a r there's a reason for that. They're human. I mean, that's the only prerequisite for struggle in this world. If you're a human, uh there's a strong possibility that you may struggle. If you're a clinician in a high acuity situation for decades, you could very well take on the pain of other people too. It's hard to turn that light off and just go home and say the office is closed. You bring things with you. All of us do. We bring everything with us into every room we walk into. We bring third grade with us into every room we walk into. We bring our first day of kindergarten into every room we walk into. We bring our twelfth birthday party into every room we walk into. We don't consciously remember that or think about it. But all the elements and all the reactions and all the feelings that went into those events are with us everywhere we go. Imagine as a clinician in a frontline, high acuity, very tense, very stressful environment, such as a jail, helping people, one, identify potentially suicidal people. Number two, helping people remain safe, helping people sort through their lives while they're in crisis every day, all day. This person, like many clinicians, brings that with them in every room they go into as well.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

And and this gentleman, William, he he worked in a space very similar to the one that you work in right now, right? For for decades. You he's he worked in in jails and corrections facilities just like you do?

SPEAKER_01 7:26

His entire career was within that uh environment, yes.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

And he was a single father, he was a mentor to some and a very dedicated professional by all accounts.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

By all accounts, very well liked, very well respected by both the law enforcement side of the house as well as the patients and the and and uh the medical personnel and everyone else involved in the care of those uh detainees.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Aaron Powell Well, so just like we do in every episode, we're gonna go through this case and we're gonna find that through line that connects William's story to prevention today. And in doing so, we hope to continue our mission of challenging myths and stigma surrounding suicide. And most importantly, making the conversation about suicide approachable, casual. You know, you hear casual about a topic that's serious like this. Some people might think what we're saying is cavalier. That's not true. You should be able to talk, you should be able to talk about this just like you would talk about a physical malady like cancer or something like that, because sometimes it does require medical intervention, but it also requires societal intervention. And that's what our mission is here at Anatomy of an End.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

I I really am glad you said that. It's it's amazing that um in social settings, even uh non-familial social settings such as work, people will easily break into conversations about their diabetes, their blood sugars, their colonoscopy, whatever's going on with them. And it's nothing's thought of that. But when we enter into an area related to in any way, shape, or form of mental illness, it's usually done in a derogatory manner about someone else gossip. Or if it is in a manner in which someone is trying to share, stigma creeps in, impressions are made negatively about that person, and therefore they feel different, they feel rejected, and guess what? You know, they don't want to talk about it. Why can't we talk about this like we talk about Sunday's football scores? Right? Why can't we?

SPEAKER_00 9:28

And and that sort of avoidance, walking on eggshells, as you called it in one of our previous episodes, refusing to use direct terms, talking about suicide, it pushes people who are struggling with suicidality further into the shadows and into isolation, making it more difficult for them to find the recovery that they really need.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

It really is. Language is important, and I'm guilty of this, you know, when because, you know, let's face it, I'm an old dude, right? But in my training and back in the days and all my readings of uh in my training, you know, going all the way back to uh Emil Durkheim and and so forth regarding suicide, you know, we hear the term committed suicide. Well, think about that a moment. That's that's a pretty negative term, committed, like we committed a crime. Right. And I've used I've used committed.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

It's a it's a you know, it's a pejorative of it didn't used to be seen that way, though.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

No, it didn't. It didn't. But the more I think about it, I understand why we have to check that. All right, because it is language that affects our impression of an event that destroys lives. This person committed suicide. A person doesn't commit suicide, they die by suicide. Committing suicide connotes to me, now that I look at it through that lens, connotes to me that they committed some type of crime, that they snuck around and did something with a full commission of all their faculties because it was the right thing to do, or because they really just felt like it. And suicide is much more complex than that.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Absolutely. Well, let's see what William can teach us about preventing suicides in our society. When did you first meet William?

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Well, I met William briefly a couple of times uh in my visit to that facility. I was contracted to come in and help them with some other issues there and to do some education with in some forensic techniques in psychology with uh some of the officers. And I knew of him uh as the the lead clinician at that facility for the mental health team. But oddly enough, I had been gone from there and had not returned there in probably six, seven, eight months. And then it was time for me to go back and follow up on my work there, and I hear about William has passed. And these are the terms you hear, you know, William passed, or William's no longer with us. And I'm like, oh my goodness, because you know, I'm even old, I'm older than him, and I'm thinking, well, wow, it was an accident or was he in bad health? I'm sorry to hear that. And then it was the whole story came out that William had committed suicide. That was the term they used. And I said, Oh my goodness. Uh, but then there was uh also a worry that it wasn't suicide, that it was murder.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

And and just part, I just want to ask something real quick before we continue. How long had you been working in this field at that time? Twenty-five years. Okay, so you were pretty deep into your into your career at this point. Easily. Okay. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

The facility, the management of the facility, the government of that county, no one asked me to do a psychological autopsy, which really intrigued me. You know, if it was a detainee there, obviously uh it's required. It is not required unless someone requests it uh in with, you know, a citizen uh in the public sector. Though he worked in the in the jail, he was a citizen of the public sector, no doubt. But the circumstances of his death brought some uh suspicion upon the facility. And unfortunately, William died. And again, folks, we're using the name William out of respect to his family because his actual name is not what's relevant here. What's relevant here is the the dynamics and the events leading to and after his death. But William died from a gunshot wound to his head in the bedroom of his girlfriend. And there's where the story becomes kind of convoluted right there. Where and whom he was with. And I know you had some questions about that, and and many people did. The young lady was 25 years his junior, and that's not really the the the biggest part of this. She was also a former inmate of that facility, and it appears that their affair began before she left the facility.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

And could you discuss briefly the ethical questions about that sort of relationship between a provider and an inmate?

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Oh, sure. I mean, ethically, one, if you're treating someone, you know, obviously you're not going to have relations with that person. And um various states have timelines on that because humans are humans and feelings can evolve, but generally, most places it's it's forbidden or considered unethical. I agree with that. It is unethical. And at the same time, people do end up in relationships, but years after they were maybe being treated. Uh, that's sometimes that's an excusable, if you can, if that's the right word, um, scenario for such a relationship. In this case, though, she was a an inmate, a detainee. By law and by ethics, detainees, inmates cannot consent to sexual activity or relationships of any kind. It's just like a student cannot consent to someone in control of them, a teacher, an instructor, a principal, just like a minor cannot consent to an adult. That's against the law. Same thing here, same principle. So there's a legal principle here involved here, and there's an ethical one as well.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

He was so so he was working there when this began?

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Yes. Okay. Then that's there's the key issue there that this took place in the facility. There were times they were alone in this facility, and now that all involved know that a relationship was in place. So what was going on in these times alone or unsupervised by the eyes of the cameras or unsupervised by an officer? Ethical violations uh were highly suspect. And then she had only been out uh about a week or two when this took place, and he was in her dwelling, in her bedroom when this took place. So even if one made the argument that nothing uh went awry while she was in the facility, it certainly moved quickly after she got out to the point that she confirmed of intimacy, and she confirmed also in a very brash way that they had had sex many times within the jail. So what do we do then? We say, Oh, well then who cares how he died? Look what he did. He did this bad thing, he was unethical, and he was not a um an honorable professional, and so on. No. I I'm not sure if all those elements may have played a role in the let's just say how deeply they looked into the death because this was an embarrassment for that county that their person that they had trusted for so long had possibly had an affair, uh reportedly had an affair, while the with the person that's in the jail.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Is this a factor often do institutions like this try to add a layer of discretion that often translates into maybe the right outcome not happening after the fact?

SPEAKER_01 16:50

I mean, I would have to say yes. People are prosecuted for that. You know, do you understand? Depending on the municipality, some folks will just get fired and then they'll go their separate ways. Many times people are prosecuted, it's a type of rape. And it doesn't, and it doesn't matter whose idea it was. They cannot consent. We must remember that. It's like saying she asked for it, you know, when, you know, and she cannot ask for it because she cannot consent. And this young lady was um, you know, she was quite brash and she was uh quite a character and very uh straightforward with her language and very um let's just say um obnoxious. Obnoxious and and and didn't mince words uh at all and didn't care and more power to her, you know. She she said what she wanted to say and and did what she wanted to do uh to her own detriment and others as well, but you know, so be it. Well, here's the issue. Uh it was automatically assumed that he killed himself. The circumstances were a bit suspect. His predicament was highly suspect, which caused, in my opinion, a quick turnaround in the investigation and the book being closed. This uh upset his daughter. She felt there's more to this. As with, and you'll hear me say this many times as episodes come forward here, that families many times, many, many times, when they get the news of a suicide, their first response is that it wasn't a suicide. It couldn't be a suicide. My father or my brother or whomever, they would have told me, they would have said something. They would never do this, they would never do this. You know, if you remember Susan's mother, what did she say? Susan would never do this to me. You know, see, like it was an act towards her.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Why is that, Dana? Is it because she doesn't look like someone who would commit suicide?

SPEAKER_01 18:40

No, because she's mean and she's aggressive and and abrasive, and suicidal people are sad and crying.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

And obviously, this is that's we're being sarcastic.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

That is, we're being facetious and and uh to a point and on purpose. Yes, suicidal people could be sad and crime, but they can also be abrasive, they can also be aggressive, they could also be angry. Anger, by the way, is an element of depression. And they can also be a clinician, they could also be a person that people look up to, a person who wants to help people. They could also be a person who keeps people to the best of their ability from turning to suicide, as in William.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

And suicides do not always come with obvious warning signs. They do not.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

They do come, though, with a great deal of unanswered questions for those left behind. Questions for many that never get answered, especially if there was not even an attempt at a psychological autopsy post event.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

And that's where you come in with this psychological autopsy that almost didn't happen, correct? It wasn't going to happen at all.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

The facility, the government there, uh officials, everyone involved had closed the book. This is over. He killed himself, and this is terrible, and they move on. I get that. It was his daughter that had heard about me and and had talked to some of the clinicians that still work there, and she asked me if I would do it. And I've never turned anyone down that's asked me. It's and and I don't ask for compensation. I I've never turned anyone down if I could do it logistically, if I could get to the and and if I could get the materials I need and and the background I need to at least offer a legitimate psychological autopsy, not just conjecture. But this was a bit touchy because, you know, I knew him uh a little bit. I wasn't a friend of his. Uh I had met him professionally, and also knew the political environment of his death was was suspect and and tricky as well. So I I went into the case. I went in full steam as though, you know, uh as I would with any other um job like this, with any other endeavor such as this, and a lot came to light. And as with many psychological autopsies, the answers that came forward and the theory that came forward were not completely pleasing to his daughter, uh, but they were real and they were viable. And in the long run, that provides some stability. It does provide some type of solace that, you know, in the end, her father was just a human being. And the psychological autopsy uncovered uh a lot about his life and possibly his motivations.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

But just because somebody might have made a bad decision here or a chain of bad decisions, that doesn't necessarily mean someone's a bad person, right? I certainly hope not.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Because if that's the threshold, then I I gotta I tell you what, everyone, we we all are we all are suspect, right? But I I'll say this um when a person's in a position like his where he constantly is held. Helping, he's constantly giving of himself, constantly searching for ways to help people that most of society could give a uh a crap about because of the bad things they've done or allegedly done. Then what is he left with when, you know, what's the old term? Who's filling his bucket? Right? If you like, I could go into his background.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Yeah, absolutely. I was about to say, let's just let's dive into your investigation, but that's part of it. His background is pertinent here, and I'm sure it's stuff that you learned about during your doing your psychological autopsy.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Sure, surely. Um, as we said, William was a 25-year veteran, uh clinician, frontline clinician in highly acute areas, uh, with some very desperate people. No doubt he had assessed for suicide potential hundreds and hundreds of people in his career. No doubt he had stepped people down from suicide watch and helped them mitigate the issues that brought them to the edge of acting upon uh self-harm ideations, and and thankfully so. What we also find out, though, is like we said, he's a human being. He was a single father, divorced uh many years earlier, taking on the responsibility of raising uh at the time of the divorce a three-year-old, and he raised her alone while working full-time and also while extending and continuing his education. He took the job that he could find. He didn't set out actually to work in that environment. He wanted to be a psychotherapist and a counselor, but he found a quick opening when there was a job available that didn't require licensure at the time, and he took it and he stayed with it. He felt he had found his niche, and he did. He was really good at what he did. And by all accounts, now that requires a lot of giving, very little taking, a lot of giving. Out there, if anyone's listening that has worked in those environments, they will tell you the same thing. It's a lot of giving, very little taking, very little receiving. His off time was spent devoted to his daughter. So he had no social life really, other than the social life of being a dad and making sure she had all the activities and education and all that all of her needs were met emotionally, physically, mentally, and he did a great job. She's a wonderful young lady. He did a really good job with her, and that required sacrifice as well. He was not a uh an old fellow at all when when this all started for him. So a lot of people, a lot of peers of his who were single had did not have kids. They were out having fun on weekends and doing things. Not him. He's doing what all single parents do, male or female. He was devoted to his child. This went on for a couple of decades. And then maybe one day someone catches his eye, and maybe one day someone attempted to give to him. Or maybe one day he noticed something in somebody, and his his guard came down, his clinical guard came down. And what I mean by that is maybe one day he stopped being a clinician first and a father first and just became a human man who's lonely, who is without social discourse, without social interaction, engagement, who has no real community other than detainees, inmates in need, constant need, the demands of his of his profession and the demands and needs of his daughter, and nothing else.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Colloquially speaking, we could say he maybe let loose a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

Could be. We could say let loose, or maybe even on a on a more um uh psycho uh deeper psychological level, maybe he became more vulnerable. Um and that's not to say that he was on the receiving end of any predatory behavior by the the young lady. I'm not gonna s ever say that because he was well aware of his behavior, well aware uh of his um uh crossing of boundaries because he took steps to conceal those things.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

So there's there's no doubt in anybody's mind that he understood the ramifications of something like this if it were to if it were to get out.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

But his priorities changed.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

There was always a priority to do the right thing and be the right guy in the right place at all times. At some point in his life, that became too much. And possibly at some point in his life, he said, What about me? Why not me?

SPEAKER_00 26:42

And do you do you think that maybe this happened uh over like a gradient? Like, like maybe the constant giving and giving and giving broke down these these um these inhibitions over time, or do you think it was something that just happened like that?

SPEAKER_01 26:58

I'm gonna say over time, and and I'll I'll tell you why. Because he worked with lots of people over time. It wasn't that this one person showed up and just, you know, the clouds parted, the sun came in and he heard the angelic uh music. That that's not what happened. You have decades of working in this intense world, and it's a very thankless world as well. I can tell you that. Um and people who work in that environment will tell you it can be quite thankless. You have to have a true calling. You have to have a true calling, and you have to be very serious about what you do. And he was. It's a shame that this behavior at the end of his career and the end of his life will forever cast a shadow over his work throughout this pretty substantial career. Because most people do not stay in this one environment that long. They may come in, they dabble in it, they may do it part-time, they may do it 10 years or so, then they move on to private practice and and other things maybe, or hospital settings, but not stay directly in that this setting. You know, it's a very difficult one, and it's hard. So William stayed in it. So to answer your question more precisely, I believe that over time, you know, anything can be worn down. And I believe he was worn down. I believe he had no outlet. And there's one other coinciding factor. His daughter was now grown. All right. So what we all ask ourselves, you know, who are we? What is our purpose? He had these purposes, you know, he had this career, which he worked very hard at and did very well at, and was very well thought of because it supported his main job: be a good father, raise his daughter the right way, give her what she needs. Okay, now the daughter being raised, that's over. She's grown, she's gone, left the home, she's married, right? No kids at this time, so he's not a grandfather.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

She's out of the house, and now he's this older guy. Do you think he would have left this profession if not for his daughter? Do you think he stayed there with that motivation and drive out of responsibility to her?

SPEAKER_01 29:07

I couldn't really answer that. I I would say that um it's certainly could be a factor. It had to be a weighing factor because, you know, we all, like in any profession, you know, we get tired and we think, wow, I wonder what else could I could do, right? But it doesn't work out. You know, we we we stick with what we know, hopefully, and and our opportunities that, you know, burden the hand. I have this job and I'm doing fine, and people stick with it. In that arena, jails, prisons, forensics, the pressure can be so much that you have to ask yourself, why am I doing it? You know, it can it be that the satisfaction of doing a good a good job and helping people, can it be the pay, can it be which it's probably not, or can it be that my responsibilities demand that I don't have a hiccup? I can't quit my job and wait three months and find another job. I have responsibilities, I have a mortgage, I have a child, and so on. So, you know, I I would say all those factors are are things to that to consider. But now you gotta remember, now his daughter's grown, and now he's not a young guy anymore. And so socially, what is available to him? What was available to him socially became what was something he sees every day. Right. So we have this problem where his life outside did not exist. His only life that existed was his job. Men over the age of you know, in the in their mid-60s, uh sometimes, and statistics will show you that they can become suicidal.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

It's a big demographic.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

It's a big demographic, and why is that? But because they lose, many of them lose an identity when they lose when they stop working.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

And then people need an identity. It's intrinsic to our to humans. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

I mean, it sounds so cliche, you know. Who am I? When you talk to folks, they'll tell you who they are, right? You know, how hey, how you doing? Good. Um, what do you do? How many times do you get on a plane and someone asks you, complete stranger? So, where are you going? And you tell them where you're going. What's the next question? What do you do? What do you do? Oh, I do this, I do that. Translation, I am this, I am that.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

But did he realize that his identity was fracturing at the time, though? Because you going back to what we were talking about the importance of identity, surely at some level, he must have understood that he, when he began that behavior, he stopped being that fine upstanding clinician that everyone knew him as.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

I believe so. And I think that's what's important about the timing of it. If this had happened uh three years into his profession, that's something very different. I think it had gone so long, he had sacrificed so long that the threshold for acceptance of such behavior became very, very low. And I think he got to a point after his daughter was gone and into her own life, and he's left with his only world, his work, and his only social outlet were the people he meets there at work, right? I mean, that was his peer group. As maladaptive as that sounds, his peer group were those people. The people he talks to the most in any given day were those people. So I would say you reach a point, he reached a point where he said, you know what? Why not me? I deserve love. She loves me. He thought this person loved him. She wants me. He wants to be wanted. Human beings want to be wanted. William wanted to be wanted. He had a huge purpose in his life, was no longer readily apparent to him. He wasn't you still always a father, but it's not readily apparent that he's needed as a father when the daughter is married and has her own life and and and and following you know the natural steps in progression in life. So what is he left with? Creature comforts. Acceptance, needs, wanting to be wanted, wanting to be loved, engagement, companionship. Now that's a bill of goods that were sold to him quite well by this person. We would hope that he would have had the ability, and I think earlier in his career when he had other purposes outside of that environment, like his daughter and her needs. I'm sure he was quite clear, though, you know, after his death, people were trying to make speculation that other things had happened uh during his tenure there, but all that is speculation, and that's natural with these kind of events, you know, they pile on.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Sure. So he's in that situation. He's just trying to get a little bit of something for himself after a life of giving. He knew he was risking his career, he knew he was risking his reputation. He might potentially have considered the fact that he was risking his um his relationship with his daughter, although, as you said, if she had still been in his life in a more solid way like she was when she was living there, maybe that wouldn't have been the case. So, where do you enter the picture here? So law enforcement had kind of closed the book here. Yeah, and yeah, and you almost didn't um conduct the psychological autopsy. The daughter wanted this.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

Well, uh as I said, you know, she believed that the police and the county had overlooked a murder because this person had quite a sordid background, had been to prison a couple of times.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

The the girlfriend.

SPEAKER_01 34:13

Yes. But that's that's pretty easy to assume. And when it comes to suicide, people grasp at every other possibility other than it being someone wanted to take their own life. And even so, many people who die by suicide actually did not want to die. That's kind of hard for people to get their head around, but it is a myth to think that 100% of people who take their life wanted to die. It's kind of hard.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

And this has been s sort of proven in people who have been uh in where there has been a successful intervention, they will, by their own account, admit that they at the last moments are glad that they didn't uh take their own lives.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

Aaron Powell Uh Many times they don't even think of it as taking their life. They think of it as just transcending to something different, leaving trouble behind. They want to end the pain, the immediate pain, but they don't take it emotionally to the next step that hey, I'll be dead. I won't be here anymore.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

Which is why it's so important that we, on a cultural level, have to become comfortable with calling suicide what it is, and it's killing yourself. It's not removing yourself from a painful situation, it's not very good transcending your demons, you know, just I'll just leave this all, I'll leave this all behind. It's it's it's dying, and it's the only thing you can ever do that will be for all eternity.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

That is the only result of taking that action on oneself is death. It solved no problem. It left problems behind. They didn't mean to leave problems behind, but it does because people don't receive it like any other loss of life as a car accident, heart attack, cancer. We expect that. We're conditioned from earliest ages that we're mortal. We're wired, as we've talked before, for self-preservation. We're not wired for, you know, self-destruction. Of course.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

Of course. So I just want I thought it was important to kind of veer off and talk about that for a moment. You know, pulling it back, the last thing you had said was about the myth of people who die by suicide not wanting to die as it pertains to this investigation.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

Right. Now, this is a psychoautopsy, so I have to look at the some facts here. The modality of his act, gunshot wound to the head. So that's a very determined act. It wasn't an overdose where, well, I might die, I might not die, I'm gonna take a bunch of pills and we'll see what happens. This type of uh act. It wasn't a gesture of cutting that could have been intervened and and and he could have been saved. It was a gunshot wound directly to his um left parietal lobe.

SPEAKER_00 36:58

So that would indicate he definitely he was trying to kill himself, knowing certain terms.

SPEAKER_01 37:03

Yes. Was it pre-planned? Probably not. Was it uh determined? Yes. Uh was it uh effective? Yes. Was it impulsive? I'm going to say after my review, it was an impulsive act, not a pre-planned act. And here's the background of why I make my determination of it being a determined act in the moment, but an impulsive one without uh prior planning. I believe that while she was locked up and they were having their affair, it was a fantasy for him in such a way. He was living a double life. It was exciting to him. I believe that and and there were letters and notes that she had written where she professed her love for him and how wonderful and he was the best thing that ever happened to her, and she couldn't believe that such a wonderful person had come into her life and no one would believe it. But no more than two weeks out, she was draining his bank account. He had purchased or rather arranged for the lease on the home in which she was in. He w had dipped into his retirement, which was coming to pay for her wants, not her needs, her wants. She was living extravagantly, uh, so to speak, in in that particular community.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

On his on his dime.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

All on his dime. He she was draining him, and then she was physically abusing him as well. He there were signs of him having been hit and bruised and beat. You know, th this is just a fact here. She was a larger person than him, and uh she was uh uh not she was accustomed to physical aggression and using physical aggression to get her way. But she was also accustomed to using, you know, um her sexuality to get her way as well. It was quite a, let's say, a reality check once she was out of the jail. Now, I'm sure he felt quite foolish. And who could he go to with this mistake? Who could he go to to confide such a mistake?

SPEAKER_00 39:20

W was he was this like a a trap in that he didn't know it was gonna be like this, you think, until after he got in? Because he's he knew her when she was when she was institutionalized. What was she incarcerated for?

SPEAKER_01 39:32

Uh drug trafficking, prostitution, extortion, and I believe she had a past arrest for aggravated assault.

SPEAKER_00 39:40

Aaron Ross Powell So she had at least one violent crime on her rap sheet. Several.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

So And and her behavior within facilities uh noted that she was involved in many altercations and uh manipulative behaviors as well. But I'm not gonna let William off the hook with the idea that and or paint a picture that here's this older gentleman and who was just simply taken advantage of by this, you know, obviously manipulative career criminal. He had responsibility in this. Sadly, though, he didn't reach out for help when he felt the feelings. Feelings and thoughts come before behavior most of the time. There are impulsive things such as his death, I believe was impulsive. But to get involved with this person over a period of time, these were thoughts and actions and and behaviors, right? There's a progression, as you mentioned earlier, gradient. He didn't just meet her and they had sex. Okay. This took time. Right. All the while the train is moving slowly out of the station. Easier to jump off the train as it's moving slowly, right? Once the train was in full speed, flying down the tracks. I can only imagine that he didn't know how to jump off at that point.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

There was a point of no return at some at some point.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

Now she's out draining him financially. He's completely been drained because he had to start making preparations for her prior to her getting out.

SPEAKER_00 41:10

And at this point, he has no choice. I mean, she's got him, she he's her captive now. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 41:15

Now he's no longer this living this you know young person's uh um life of love and and uh passion. Now he's with the reality of a person who he can't just send back to her unit when they're finished meeting. She's there in public and she's saying things in public and he has no way out.

SPEAKER_00 41:40

And who can he go to? And I say captive because at this point he's in a situation where even the smallest grievance could lead to her flipping on him, right? Sure. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 41:51

Obviously, she could flip in the in the manner of let's say the state board and and affect his licensure. She could do that. She could contact his employer and affect his employment. But there's something deeper too. She could contact his daughter. And do you think that's where the real shame was here? I'm gonna say yes. Which put me in a difficult position because you think about this, I go to her and I say, Well, I can't say though I believe he took these steps to end his life because he didn't want to hurt you or was shamed or regretful about something that would embarrass you because the survivor would then take on some guilt, which is an incongruent response to suicide. Many survivors, many those of that are left behind, take on a great deal of guilt in the as part of the process after the death of a loved one. But I would say yes, in this instance, that William, faced with the idea that even he had been taken and that he went as far to destroy his career, his reputation, but more importantly, be in any way diminished in his daughter's eyes was too much for him.

SPEAKER_00 43:08

Of course. Yeah, absolutely. That makes sense. And also if you think about it, like this guy's he's isolated now. He's ensnared himself in a world that looked good on the surface when he first entered it. It was relieving. He needed something. That need was being fulfilled at first, but there was a point, like you said, the train speeds up, he he passes that point of no return, and now he's trapped. And he's in a place where that shame is only growing because he's in isolation now. He's in a world that's totally separate from the one that everyone else sees him living in. He can feel the walls closing in, he can imagine what it would be like to have this secret life exposed, and ultimately he ends up psychologically isolated.

SPEAKER_01 43:50

You just nailed it. That's correct. He was isolated psychologically. Nothing that he thought in this dream world was going to take place now. And I'm not trying to create. Sympathy for him as though he is a victim of this person. He was a victim in many respects, but he was also a willing victim due to his own inability early in his career to develop engagements and social connections with people that would have kept him from being vulnerable, would have kept that threshold higher as he went through his career and got older and his daughter left and he was no longer needed as a father as much. His purpose changed. We have to develop those purposes and those engagements earlier so that when our life changes and when we move to a different vocation or our vocation comes to an end, that we have another life in its place. He was unable to do that. And I again I say that lowered his threshold for accepting this decision he made and accepting this idea. Whose idea was it first? Was it hers? Was it his? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 45:00

And it doesn't really matter.

SPEAKER_01 45:01

It doesn't matter. People will blame her first because everybody loved William. But in the end, William didn't love William enough. William loved his daughter. William loved his work, but he didn't give enough to himself along the way. And he became, as you said, psychologically isolated. Now, how do I express this to his daughter? Well, I express it as follows that he loved you very much, as though I'm talking to her, I would say he loved you very much, that he was vulnerable, he felt isolated, and then I would explain to her that people who feel like he felt don't always see the reality of their situation.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

Right.

SPEAKER_01 45:41

So there's no blame for her to take on no guilt she should be taking on because it's incongruent to the situation. She had nothing to do with his decision making except for the fact that he would never want to harm her. And in that moment, I believe, and that's how I have to say it, I believe that he would rather take his life in a quick manner than something harm his daughter over a period of time by way of his reputation being demolished, newspapers, you know, and and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 46:16

So you posit that he might have perceived this as saving his daughter. Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

One may be listening to me right now and think, well, how do you know that this young lady wasn't in love with him or didn't really care about him? And as always, I go a I base a lot on behavior, not words. So to give you um an idea, this happened at a at an at night. By the way, he was also taking care of her daughter in this living arrangement. So he was paying for her daughter's life, a car, gas money, insurance, food, clothes, social activities, trips. All this was going on. By their uh statements that they were arguing, and he suddenly hopped up from the living room where they were all standing. He went into the bedroom, one, you know, one wall away, through the next door, took a gun out of her nightstand. Now she's a felon with a gun. That's not right. Yeah. Um, and he took it out and immediately shot himself there, sitting on the edge of her bed. She called 911, and he was dead on arrival. The police came, they took statements, and they said they'd be back the next day to talk more and to, you know, and give some follow-up, and they did. And in their statements, I read, she answered the door the next morning because she knew they were coming. She answered the door in a bikini. We'll just say ill-fitted bikini. And doesn't really strike me as somebody in grieving. No, but you know, people do grieve differently. Uh, but she invited them in uh and they said, Well, ma'am, please go put on some clothes. We'll wait outside. And she got mad about that. She thought, why do I have to do that? They asked her, Why do you have on a swimsuit? And she said, Well, we, I'm I'm assuming her and her daughter, maybe someone else, we were sunbathing. So I'm not sure who sunbates the morning after your so-called loved one shoots themselves in the head in your room, in your bedroom, who stays in that same home and gets up the next day, puts on a bikini, goes outside and sunbathe. Now, once again, people react differently. Trauma will tell you that people can do some bizarre things after uh a traumatic event, but police love to they love to guess at that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 48:44

Yes, they do. But obviously, people do grieve differently.

SPEAKER_01 48:56

They do grieve differently, and and I'll I will say that you know I disagree when they make those statements. Some make those statements, they don't all do, but some do. I will say this though, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that she was not grieving at all. Right. By the looks of his body, when I viewed the physical autopsy photos, he had cuts. Uh they were not self-inflicted, he had bruises. She claimed those came from him attacking her. She didn't have a mark on her. I wasn't there. I'm not going to say that that's not possible, but he had no history of violence. She had quite a history of violence. He had never even delivered corporal punishment to his daughter her entire life. Absolutely no report of him ever putting his hands on anyone ever. And he was bruised and cut. He also had his car had been keyed, she had gotten mad and tore the seats in his car with a knife, things like this had taken place. And the police knew all of this? Well, after the fact they did. Okay. Right. Because you ex you examine, you know, everything like in particular the car stands out to me because his daughter told me he had just purchased the car the year before and it was completely trash. But he was also he was known to be a meticulous person with who kept things nice and neat. But she had been using the car for two weeks, you know, and they had had these arguments, quote unquote. Um, I imagine there were no witnesses to these arguments, but um one can say that should he or had he ever objected to her using his credit cards or everything else she was doing, I imagine it was met with threats and it looks like physical violence, and he had no recourse. So what do we know what are we looking at? Looking at a clinician who screens people and assesses people for self-harm, works hard to keep them from self-harming or killing themselves, and ironically dies by suicide. All because, in my opinion, he reached a point in his life where he lost identity. He lost vocation, meaning, you know, the identity associated with his vocation of being a father, and sought love and acceptance from someone, which gave him a feeling of romance, intrigue, excitement until she got out. Very different, you know, once the person's out of the gym. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 51:22

So just want to ask, you did say that the uh that law enforcement closed the book on this. They did their investigation. They didn't end up seeing those things though, right? Like the torn car seats and the they recognize that he had some uh some bruises and stuff on on his person.

SPEAKER_01 51:37

Yes. Um no witnesses to you know how those things took place, though.

SPEAKER_00 51:43

But all they had was her word. Gotcha. So but but yet we are still left with two possibilities, right? Like it's a suicide or a murder staged as one, right?

SPEAKER_01 51:53

Right. And I I'm gonna tell you that in my understanding uh of this and looking at the circumstances, I can see why murder would be something what one would say, giving the the lady's background, but motive was not really present because why would she murder her cash cow? Why would she murder her viability? She murdering him ends the lease on the home. It ends the car notes being paid, it ends so many things and leaves her with really little recourse.

SPEAKER_00 52:29

And she hadn't found some sort of other benefactor or anything like that? Not that we know of. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 52:35

Right. It was too early in. But it's easy to jump to that conclusion. I mean, it's her she's in her home. She has a gun. He didn't own a gun. It was her gun in her room. And obviously, what do we look at? Exterior from the exterior, we look at, well, here's a clinician, a person who devoted their life to helping people, devote his life to keeping people from harming themselves and so forth, right? Doesn't seem like a person like that would think that suicide is a viable answer to any of his problems. It's pretty ironic. So if it's ironic, then we look to an alternative. What was the alternative? Murder. But the police closed that case quickly. The questions from the daughter came because she wanted to make sure that they weren't closing the case because of their embarrassment over this person working for the county and and and what have you. The daughter knew of a woman in her father's life, had never had not met her, and did not know the circumstances of that person yet. Okay. So she was aware. She was aware that her father was seeing somebody. Okay. She was not aware of all the that it was an inmate. Right. Okay. And that he was being drained financially and so on. Got it. And she was not aware of his feelings. Now this is the main point to me. We looked from the outside, a clinician, as I've said several times, a person who's devoted to keeping things like this from happening in other people's lives. But he did not reach out and engage. And because of who he was, no one thought that he could be sad, lonely, psychologically, emotionally isolated. After all, he's a person who assesses things like that, knows the importance of engagement, of you know, physician, heal thyself.

SPEAKER_00 54:22

But maybe that's part of it though. Maybe the fact that he he understood, he's he's seen this trajectory before, he knows what the outcome is. So maybe maybe his expertise actually isolated him even more.

SPEAKER_01 54:36

I I believe you're right, and I'm gonna add something to that. He did reach out, he reached out to what was available immediately to him. There could have been some self-esteem issues, maybe feeling like no one's gonna want me like this person wants me. Look at me, I'm an old guy, you know, I don't have a lot to offer. Uh I don't have a lot to offer financially. Here's a person coming on very strong to me who who who professes love for me. Some things, these are words we let's remember, he probably has not heard in a couple of decades, except maybe from his daughter. I love you, Daddy.

SPEAKER_00 55:15

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 55:16

And we all need that. We all that's part of the human condition. There it is. Even people like him needed that. And here he was in a place where he was seeing and hearing that every day he came to work from this person. And um, I think what started the ball rolling, what started that train engine up to leave the station was that he didn't do enough self-check to understand that he was vulnerable. You know, we tell clinicians all the time, you have to have a good check on yourself. You have to get therapy yourself, you have to speak to other people about what you're dealing with in your work. He was not doing any of that. Therapists used to have a little clever word. Instead of saying they were getting therapy, you know, we we used to say, you know, oh, I'm going to get some supervision. You know, even stigma works on therapists. Instead of saying I'm getting therapy because I deal with so much stuff every day, I'm going to go get supervision.

SPEAKER_00 56:17

Yeah, dentists go to the dentist. People who cut hair have to get haircuts. And and the has this is this common? Is this uncommon for someone in this field to take their own life like this? Common, uncommon.

SPEAKER_01 56:31

I don't know how to place it in, you know, given those given those parameters, common or uncommon. I would say Is it does it have it's not uncommon.

SPEAKER_00 56:39

It's not unheard of. No, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01 56:42

Absolutely not. Psychiatrists, psychotherapists, psychologists do take their lives.

SPEAKER_00 56:48

And and you know, going back to what I had said before, uh like if he did have a mental illness, he would probably know better than somebody who wasn't in his profession. Maybe he was struggling with depression or or or some underlying condition, right? Like he had never he had never reported anything like that, had he.

SPEAKER_01 57:06

No. And and there's there it is. You know, he didn't report anything like that. Because what do clinicians do? If there's any clinicians listening out there, the lesson is key, but check on yourself. Ask for help. Don't fall prey to the same stigma that you preach against in your own clients, patients, and in persons you try to help.

SPEAKER_00 57:28

And I think one of the biggest takeaways here is that people helping others can be suffering themselves. And this this doesn't just this isn't just in reference to people who are professional clinicians. You think about people who grow up in a traumatic environment. They often grow up to be people who are extremely kind and giving because they're trying to spare other people the torment that they themselves understood when they're really struggling with some in some cases severe mental illness the whole time. But they you'd never know that on the surface.

SPEAKER_01 57:58

I would absolutely agree with that. And as a clinician, you're also faced with this idea, this image of you as seen through the eyes of the person you're working with, the client, the patient, that you're an answer person. You're not really an answer person, but they you're seen as a person with answers. So therefore, if you have a problem, how good could your answers be? If you're sufferer, then how can you help me? So they hate that so clinicians often keep their suffering or their pain or their mental uh illness uh quiet, do not ask for help as they should. Um more and more do now, but for decades they did not, because if I am mentally ill, then how can I be seen as a person that can help you if I can't help myself? It's a trap. It's a cognitive trap, it's a cognitive distortion.

SPEAKER_00 58:50

And he was experiencing that. He understood he was he was up against his values here. Yes, he was.

SPEAKER_01 58:56

And he did understand that. And when it came to a boral, the person he chose to take it all out on was himself. And as with many people who take their lives, in that quick moment, they think that their action, though hurtful to others, and they know it's going to be hurtful to others, far outweighs the ramifications of whatever secrets may come out or or what have you, if that's the case, if there are secrets that they want to avoid, if there's shame they're trying to avoid, in that moment they feel like that's bigger than the what they think will be a temporary hurt in those left behind.

SPEAKER_00 59:36

Well, and this is gonna sound like I'm directing this at like an eight-year-old, but overall, secrets are bad. Secrets bad. Secrets are never they're they're I can't think of a situation where they're beneficial, except for maybe, you know, like I don't know, a government.

SPEAKER_01 59:54

Maybe that's about it. Well, uh there's another one that's bad too. I always throw this out there. Comparing. Comparing it. Comparing never generally works out well. Yeah. Um and many times folks like William in this case, in his personal life, sitting home alone before this incident came up, before he met this person. I imagine many nights sitting alone after his daughter was gone and his purpose was diminished in that facet he thought. He's comparing himself to other people out there who are going to the beach and have this social life and have this love and looks at families walking by that he never had because it was just him and her and compared his life and used a metric that was distorted, which also lowered his threshold to for acceptance of his own decisions with this person.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:45

Yeah. And you know, one other thing I want to point out is that it almost seems like his relationship with this girlfriend of his, it's kind it's almost like it was a drug.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:53

It was. It was a fantasy. It was it there's no way it could ever have worked out.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:59

And he he goes out of his way to hide it from people, like someone who has a substance abuse issue would become very adept at hiding their their issue from those around them. Which is why people struggling with those issues, you know, what's happening inside of their head ends up being so contrary to what's happening in their everyday life. You know, they they function, they go out every day, they do their thing, but they're they're struggling with it, just like he was struggling with this relationship where he was being used and abused and he was experiencing that cognitive distortion you were talking about every day, and he was trapped.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:32

He was trapped. You know, part of his in particular, William, part of his um appeal to others was William was known as such a good guy. And sometimes people who are known as really good people, if they make a mistake, the loss of that image is also devastating.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:54

Sure. And I think it's important to point out that he died a good guy. He died a good guy. He was a good guy.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:00

He was misguided, he was lonely, he chose a path for immediate gratification without regard for the overall picture, overall ramifications of his behavior. When it forced him into a corner, he made a very unfortunate decision that will forever change his daughter's life.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:23

Extremely tragic. And I do want to have some further discussion, but we'd be doing a disservice if we didn't um tie up your psychological autopsy with with a bow here. Uh, how did you rule this?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:35

This was a a determined uh act and the etiology was uh you know it was impulsive due to uh you know hi his uh emotional state at the time. If you want the exact wording, I would uh I I determed it a determined act without anyone being complicit in the act, but it was not planned.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:54

Aaron Powell So that's obvious that's an it's a very interesting story on its surface. Tragic, tragic end for an otherwise good man. And you know, I think one of the takeaways here is that there are people around us in our lives that we interact with every day, maybe, that are that look successful on the outside while they're quietly becoming isolated on the inside. That's right. And with some of the interactions I've had with individuals on on TikTok, especially, which you know, I never you think of TikTok, you think of people like dancing around and stuff and getting five million likes. But there's some some of the engagement we got on there. I the thing that I saw the most is people who said, when I started to feel worse, I started to isolate myself, all my friends disappeared, and then I disappeared.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:43

Very profound statement. So accurate. Uh I really that it's very accurate. When we disappear to ourselves and become something we're not, that's another uh another dynamic that's possible. I think that's precisely with with William, he not only disappeared, the William we all knew, the William that his daughter loved and his co-workers loved. I believe that William disappeared and he chose another William because he didn't he didn't feel the love. He didn't feel who he really was. You know, you you say to people all the time, you know, do you know who you are? You know, I went back and going back to this, I said this earlier. Do we know who we are? Who are we? William lost track of that because he's a human being. We are emotional beings. We are emotional beings. And William was no exception. And just because he's educated, just because he had a certain profession, doesn't mean that he's not prone to or vulnerable to the same emotional downfalls as anyone else. And so he needed engagement. Unfortunately, he didn't reach out for it.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:51

Well, let's look at the multiverse of this situation here. Were there were there any missed opportunities or potential intervention points along the way?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:01

And in this one, I'm gonna say that they were missed by William.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:06

And and that may sound like, well, wow, I mean, that's pretty letting everybody off the hook here. Well, I'm gonna say why. Because he took steps to conceal his behaviors. And with his education that I mentioned, and with his profession that I mentioned, and his experience, he knew the difference. But he let himself fall prone to that. I said early on that early in his career, he knew that this profession requires that the professional seek help, seek supervision, if you want to use that word, seek therapy, to debrief, to decompress, to process all of the things they go through and all the things they hear and witness and and the stress of it all and and the emotional impact of it all. He did not take care of himself as a professional. That was the missed opportunity. Had he done that, and they teach you that in school, professionals preach this to each other. Hey, call me. You know, we, you know, let's process this. I get phone calls after I'm out on a situation where maybe something very ugly happened in a de-escalation or a hostage situation. Uh, I'll get calls from people that hear about it, that know me, and they'll say, hey, you know, you need to talk, you know, let's talk. And and you know, you gotta take advantage of that or go seek it. Don't wait for somebody to call you. William did none of that. And he knew he knew he needed to. He knew he was on he was on the road to oblivion. He could have, after 25 years and never seeking any type of decompression, any type of uh relief from it, other than just go to work, do it, go to work, do it, go home, be a dad. And obviously in time putting up a front. I'm good, I'm fine, let's go, right? Uh he wasn't fine. And I gotta tell you, regular people who don't process and don't seek help, they're not taught to do that anyway. He was taught to do that. Because that's part of the curriculum when you learn to do this work, is that you learn that you have to have some self-care, very important, or you're not gonna be any good to anybody else. Remember my analogy of airlines, right? What's the first thing they tell you when they give you the little safety speech? When the bags drop down, put yours on first before trying to help others. Why? Because you're no good to others if you can't breathe. Sure. Makes a lot of sense. You're taught that in school, and William missed that opportunity because he obviously, and we all do sometimes go spans without doing it like we should, but then we go back to it and we and we talk to people. I have people I talk to, uh, some of them former interns of mine. I talk to them. You know, we we we talk, we share, and that helps lessen the load like it would anybody else. He missed that opportunity and he paid a price for it.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:02

I think another takeaway here is when you isolate, your problems are in a vacuum where they're sustained by that isolation and they get bigger and bigger and bigger, and you start to think of them as being bigger and bigger and bigger. But the moment you open that door and you start to talk to people about those problems, they immediately shrink. They don't go away, they get smaller and they seem to be more manageable. That's why engagement is so important.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:26

It is the word that you and I use quite a bit. Engagement. William did not engage at times that he should have. Maybe he felt he didn't have the time, maybe he felt, you know, sometimes we feel it's it's selfish of us to engage because we have so many other people we have to deal with. But he did not engage and he paid uh the ultimate price for not engaging at times he he was trained to do. I can tell you that he has um he had quite a legacy of helping people. He did not have a legacy of helping himself.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:58

What would you say to other Williams that may be out there today where they found themselves into a situation where they've they've become deeply isolated, whether it be because of some external factor that's causing them shame or just because of a mental health issue that they've been having, what would you say to somebody who is pulled back from everybody, is living in that world where they feel like they can't free themselves from it? Somebody who would say, like, I just can't get out of this box. I I feel guilty for feeling this way. I I feel like there's no one that I can turn to because I don't think anyone will understand, or it might ruin my job, it might ruin my relationships, it might even ruin my own identity. What would you say to someone who felt that way?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:41

See, I would say to them, what would you say if your daughter, sister, brother came to you with those same issues? What would you say to them? You would say, Come to me, talk to me. Now, why don't you say that to yourself? Isolation is a place where cognitive distortion is brewed. It's where it's formulated. Cognitive distortion is most successfully formulated in isolation, not in engagement. Engagement can lessen cognitive distortion. It can put true metrics of ourselves in place. Because sometimes our personal metrics, how we measure ourselves, they're distorted until we engage with others who know us as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:30

Sure, of course. And I think those are those are good words for all of us. And I would also say that if you know somebody like that, or somebody that may be struggling with suicidality, which is, you know, rarely visible on the surface, but if it especially if you realize someone's been struggling, if they're off their if their behavior's been different lately, if they've stopped responding to text messages, if they haven't been hanging out with you and your friends like they used to, you know, you can ask them what you can do for them. You can do whatever you want. You can say whatever you want, but they're not going to tell you. They're not going to tell you what you can do for them. The most important thing you can do for them is to go to them and be present, be there for them, be a good friend, and most importantly, treat them like a human being and not a test subject.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:17

Yeah, you you said it so well. Um, and you're not even a clinician, man. Look at that.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:22

You you said I'm a citizen advocate.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:26

You said it so well recently, and I saw in uh when you you did a promo for our podcast, you said that anyone can be a catalyst for help and change. Anyone can be a catalyst. So I could say to everyone out there, know that you are a potential catalyst for change, for help, by simply being proximal. Be near, engage. Okay. Yes, they may it may irritate the crap out of somebody that you're being proximal, that you're being near and engaging. If they may not want it, they'll say they don't want it. But if you've noticed changes in their behavior, changes, a thing we call anhedonia, where the people are no longer enjoying things they used to enjoy or no l or they're isolating more and so forth, step in. I always say to people, I'd rather you be mad at me for engaging with you and asking the annoying questions I'm asking you over and over, I'd rather you be really pissed at me about that than your family be very mad at me because they perceived that I was near you and knew you and saw something and didn't take action and now you're gone.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:39

100%. And there's two sides to this coin. You know, when we advocate for societal engagement, we're not denying that sometimes clinical intervention is just the only thing that's that you can do. Sometimes it gets to that point, and there's no discounting that. Sometimes that is what it takes, and it's really past the point of you being able to be a good friend, someone out of their uh their mental health crisis. But what we're saying is that casual conversation about the topic of suicide will start a chain reaction in society. When people are more comfortable talking about this topic, they'll be less uncomfortable about asking their friends who they know are struggling, like, look, are you thinking about taking your own life? Are you thinking about killing yourself? I'm not saying that every situation calls for that, but you you understand my point. And that's why conversation is so important. We should be able to approach this topic just like we approach everything else. And I'm also not saying it's not serious, it's very serious. It isn't it's it's one of the most serious things you could talk about, but that doesn't mean you have to leave it sitting in the darkness because it's so unapproachable or horrific that you can't even talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:52

That is that is so correct, and we will continue to push that point as long as we have a voice to push with uh because it is that important. I've witnessed it, you've witnessed it, and I also have been a victim of stigma, and my own and my my own perception of of things has stigmatized myself. And I can tell you that uh that's just gone on for a long time, and thank goodness that thirty-six years ago I broke free from stigma and decided to embark on truth and embark on the ideas that you just exp uh expounded upon of just engagement, open talk, straight talk, no dancing around, using real language, and no longer um you know walking on eggshells, as you said earlier. Um, thank goodness for that, because that's where the change happens and that's how people can move on with their life. Because you're not stuck in this suicide is not something that's determined for you. You don't have to do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:59

Absolutely. And if you feel right now like there is no other answer, I want you to just do us a favor. If you're in crisis, reach out to 988. You can dial that on your phone, and someone will answer on the other side that will help walk you through your difficult situation. You know, there there is always hope. And it's not just for you if you're uh feeling that yourself. If you know somebody like that, you can also reach out to 988 and they'll give you some valuable insight as to how you can interact with that person and if it comes to it, how you can intervene in a meaningful way. Look, you might make some people angry at you if you think that you need to intervene like that, but it is it's very important. You know, like Dana said here a second ago, it's better for them to be mad at you than to be dead. And if you need to intervene like that, 988 will help you walk through that process.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:48

That's right. They'll get over being mad.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:50

They'll get over it. Now, next time we're gonna talk about something that we haven't really uh that we haven't really touched on yet. We're gonna talk about, I mean, I suppose we have in that Susan was in an institution, but we're gonna talk about our systems on our next episode. We're gonna get get into that facet of this too, which there's a lot of room for improvement in our systems as well. And I've uh I've heard time and again from a lot of uh people how they just felt like there wasn't enough emphasis on mental health resources for those who lost a loved one or a friend to suicide. We're gonna kind of talk about that a little bit, and and it's and it operates in an adjacent space to the next case we'll be covering, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:27

That's right. I'm looking forward to it. Uh in the meantime, uh please engage with those that you love, engage with those that you care about, engage with strangers that you feel need help. It's okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:41

Absolutely. Thank you all for listening. Stay safe, stay healthy, and remember to engage with people. See ya. See ya.