A grieving Glen Lake family shines a light on teen depression

By Jacob Wheeler

Sun editor

It wasn’t until an Aug. 29 memorial service for their son, Tommy, that Holly and Tom Reay learned how much the 17-year-old had helped other northern Michigan teenagers who also suffered from anxiety and depression.

After Tommy succumbed to his battle with mental illness on July 10, Holly looked through his phone and saw that he was talking about depression with students not just from Glen Lake—where he would be a high school senior this fall—but also from Kingsley, from Frankfort, from Leland, from Traverse City.

“One girl came to the memorial service from Kingsley, all by herself, without knowing anyone there,” said Holly. “It was hard, it was touching.”

The memorial service at the Glen Lake Yacht Club, where Tommy was a popular and beloved sailing instructor, elicited tears and hugs, stories of how much the teenager meant to his peers and friends in the Glen Lake school community, and confessions by many who shared with the Reays that they had lost a son, or daughter, or parent to suicide, but hadn’t talked openly about it.

“I was shocked by how many people had lost someone close,” said Tom. “Almost everyone had a story.”

Georgia Gietzen, who owns Northwoods Hardware in Glen Arbor together with her husband Jeff, lost her own brother to depression in 2003. Georgia’s sister-in-law Vonnie Woodrick started a nonprofit in Grand Rapids called “I Understand Love Heals” that reaches out to suicide survivors and those who have lost a loved one to suicide.

“There’s so much shame and judgement associated with mental health issues, particularly death by suicide. It’s time we shed light on the darkness,” said Gietzen.

“I can count on two hands in a two-mile radius from our house the amount of people who have lost someone to suicide,” said Holly.

Tommy’s loss this summer sent shockwaves through the Glen Lake community and pried open the door for some families to talk about mental health issues.

“There were children who knew Tommy and immediately went to their parents and asked for help,” said Tom Reay.

Out of a desire to educate the community about mental illness and depression, and shine a light on a painful subject too often swept into the shadows, the Reays—who own the Burdickville restaurant Trattoria Funistrada—used social media to destigmatize and foster conversations about suicide soon after Tommy took his own life.

“Our decision to go public with it was pretty much instantaneous,” said Holly. “We both thought it was the right way to approach this, especially now knowing how many people are out there and affected by it.”

On Sept. 1, Holly posted on Facebook that September is National Suicide Awareness month. “Funistrada is sponsoring the ‘Tommy’s First Mates’ team started by Glen Lake Principal Dina Rocheleau at the ‘Out of Darkness’ walk in Traverse City on Sept. 18 to honor our son Tommy & to support prevention,” she wrote. “So many of you have already generously donated to his scholarship, but to anyone else who might be so inclined, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is a phenomenal group. We would love to have you walk with us!”

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) is a voluntary health organization based in New York City with local chapters in all 50 U.S. states. Founded in 1987, the organization’s stated mission is to “save lives and bring hope to those affected by suicide.” AFSP offers programs and suicide-prevention curriculum for schools, for parents, and for teenagers to help them talk about suicide and help adults educate, identify those at risk, and prevent tragedy.

Educate, identify, prevent

“It’s about giving a name to the things they’re experiencing,” said Glen Lake High School counselor Matt Peschel. “It’s about reducing the impact of big, scary words, the more you talk about it. Getting help can change their trajectory.”

Peschel is incorporating AFSP programing into the school’s curriculum and hoping to increase staff education about suicide. The foundation’s “More Than Sad: Teen Depression” program teaches high school teens to “recognize the signs of depression in themselves and others, challenges existing stigma surrounding depression, and demystifies the treatment process.” More than Sad also offers programs designed for parents and teachers that encourages them to recognize signs of depression and initiate a conversation about mental health with their child.

Glen Lake is also planning a 2-3-day “Challenge Days” event in December, when facilitators will spend an intensive six hours with a high school class, address difficult topics and “pain points,” break down barriers, explore emotional vulnerabilities, and, Peschel hopes, “establish a renewed purpose.”

“Talking about suicide does not increase the likelihood of suicide,” Peschel emphasized. “We need to get rid of the biases and fears of talking about suicide.

“Like it or not, this is the time in their lives when kids need to be learning about things like depression, and how to self-identify. They need to have the right conversations with their mom, their dad or their counselor. Give it a name. ‘I’m depressed’.”

It’s incumbent upon counselors, staff and teachers at Glen Lake to also pay attention to the impact on a student of a divorce in the family, financial duress at home, or when a parent loses a job, said Peschel. “When you intervene sooner, it’s easier to get ahead of it. It all starts by talking about it. Let’s help those kid who are on the threshold of a mental illness.”

It’s unclear whether the COVID-19 pandemic and shutdown of schools in 2020 will lead to an increase in suicide rates. While some media outlets have speculated on such causation, Doreen Marshall, AFSP’s vice president of mission engagement, wrote in March 2021 that “there aren’t easy answers to this question, and this is mainly due to the complexity of suicide, the lack of complete data, the varying impacts of the pandemic, and the dynamic relationship between mental health, life stressors and suicide risk.”

In fact, Marshall pointed to “some promising preliminary data from 24 countries and multiple states in the U.S. that suggest that suicide rates during the early months of the pandemic did not rise, and in some cases, may have decreased.” Nevertheless, she continued, “this decrease may not be the case for all racial/ethnic groups or age groups. … Mental health and suicide risk do not occur in a vacuum. Systemic racism, violence, economic and overall health disparities can all have an impact on mental health and suicide.”

When schools shut down suddenly in March 2020, much of the connection that teenagers have to their friends and teachers—through classes, through lunch, through sports and extracurricular activities—was suddenly ripped away, said Peschel. Glen Lake and countless other schools in northern Michigan and across the nation upped their game and were intentional about reaching out to students in other ways.

“With students occupied less by class time, we were able to have online conversations with them that there didn’t used to be time for,” said Peschel. “COVID helped bring mental illness to the forefront of the conversation.

“We were driving to students’ houses and delivering food to those who needed it. We were making sure no one was without contact. We were asking them ‘How are you doing? What do you need? Can we talk to your parents?’”

Nevertheless, Tommy Reay’s depression had nothing to do with COVID. It started long before the pandemic, his parents said.

“Tommy never had a problem with wearing masks,” said Holly. “There are murmurs in the community that his depression was a result of masking but he didn’t care about it either way … I would disagree if someone said that the shutdown made it worse for him. He was much more upset about political and social divisions than anything else.”

The Reays sent a statement to the Glen Lake School Board asking that they forward that message to any parent who argued (erroneously) that Tommy was an example of the effects of masking or online schooling or any COVID mitigation measures.

Healthcare hurdles, lingering stigma

Gaps in local healthcare, and a nationwide health system ill-equipped to help teens suffering from anxiety and depression, posed significant hurdles for the Reay family.

“We had several counselors for Tommy, and we had to facilitate the communication between them,” said Holly. “We felt like he needed a team, including the school, but the system doesn’t set itself up that way. We had to do our own advocating.”  Tom said that federal Health Information Privacy (HIPAA) rules sometimes posed impediments to transparency about what Tommy needed.

HIPAA privacy rights between a 17-year-old and his parents can be signed away, but the Reays weren’t immediately told that.

“In hindsight, it really prolonged our ability to nail some of his issues down — simple things that could have easily been addressed,” said Holly.

“Parents of a child in crisis need to get help as much for themselves but also to help them learn how to navigate these illnesses and better support their child,” she added. “We felt like we were flailing about in the dark trying to find solutions. If we had known the right way to talk to him about what he was experiencing, for example, instead of trying to cheerlead him through it, we might have bought some time.”

With counselors in the high school, middle school, and elementary school, a caseload worker, and a well-educated and wealthy surrounding community, Glen Lake is probably better equipped than most schools, said one parent of a high school student who preferred not to be named in this story. “But that’s hardly a safety net. A counselor only has so many hours in the day. If the parents aren’t there, and they don’t have the resources (to deal with their child’s mental illness) counselors can’t always be the front line.”

The healthcare system in northwest-lower Michigan offers very little for adolescent mental health treatment. Munson Medical Center in Traverse City, and its surrounding network, has no inpatient residential treatment or inpatient drug treatment for juveniles. The closest facility offering inpatient care for teenagers is in Grand Rapids, with a several-month wait list.

“Pretty much the only way to get an inpatient bed at Munson is through the emergency room,” said Tom. “You have to have a parent or guardian there 24 hours a day, and you have to sleep on the lobby furniture.”

“We were told that admitting him (to the ER) would do more harm than good,” added Holly. “So the child is released back into the arms of an already stressed parent. Because of the lack of availability of inpatient care in our area.”

The healthcare industry is also playing catchup as it struggles to understand what drugs should treat a teenager’s mental illness.

“I’ve had several doctors tell me that medication is like throwing a dart. ‘Let’s try this and see if it helps’,” said Holly. “We put Tommy on an ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) med before his anxiety and depression was diagnosed. It was a stimulant. I firmly believe that it exacerbated his anxiety. Plus, antidepressants take 4-6 weeks to uptake. You’re playing Russian roulette with this medicine.”

The lingering public stigma of a mental health disorder challenged the family, too.

“With Tommy, I don’t know if many people outside our home knew how overwhelming it was for him on his bad days,” said his father Tom. “The anxiety causes you to feel that the world is an unsafe place. Your inability to navigate it leads to feelings of inadequacy, self-hatred and depression.

“I also think that due to the stigma of mental health, he was reluctant to fully engage with his therapist because it would have meant admitting the problem.”

Though the larger system needs an overhaul, the Reays maintain that the local support they received from the school, from counselors, and from Tommy’s doctor was great.

Playing in the sand dunes

Two days before he died, on Thursday, July 8, Tommy led the younger kids enrolled at the Yacht Club in a game of “capture the flag” in the Sleeping Bear Dunes.

“The Yacht Club kids loved him. They climbed him like a tree,” said Holly. “That week, he stayed out with friends, he was the happiest I’d seen him in a long time. … But suddenly the moment changed.”

“In Tommy’s case, the hard part was what a happy person he was, so loving and kind,” said Tom. “He was an A and B student. He was one of the most positive and well-liked kids in school. He was never too cool to hang out with. If he saw a 10-year-old who was new, he’d talk to the new kid who was feeling left out. 

“The disease robbed him of all that. To the point where he didn’t think he had any friends.”

After Tommy passed, a neighbor, who Holly said outwardly resembles a poster child for success and happiness, confided to her that he is medicated and counseled regularly. The man said that his mental illness “feels like being strapped to a table and having your skin peeled off.”

“Tommy’s anxiety and suffering were so intense… I couldn’t understand it until this man told me,” said Holly.

“The biology of an adolescent isn’t fully developed until they’re in their mid-20s,” she added. “If we can just get them through these vulnerable years, and buy them some time …”

Parents have to listen, engage, and advocate for their kids, said Tom.

“Tommy had access to medical care. He had a very charmed life. There was no anger or fighting in our home. But we’re not immune from this. It’s an illness that you don’t see. That was a big reason we wanted to be honest and open about this.”

“He wasn’t trying to get away from life, but trying to get away from the disease. Tommy loved life.

“There’s not a person who knew Tommy who doesn’t wish he was here with us today. Any young person who’s considering ending their pain needs to know that the world is a better with them in it.”