All the Bright Places

AUTHOR’S NOTE
Every forty seconds, someone in the world dies by suicide. Every forty
seconds, someone is left behind to cope with the loss.
Long before I was born, my great-grandfather died of a self-inflicted
gunshot wound. His oldest child, my grandfather, was just thirteen. No one
knew if it was intentional or accidental—and being from a small town in the
South, my grandfather and his mother and sisters never discussed it. But that
death has affected our family for generations.
Several years ago, a boy I knew and loved killed himself. I was the one
who discovered him. The experience was not something I wanted to talk
about, even with the people closest to me. To this day, many of my family and
friends still don’t know much, if anything, about it. For a long time, it was too
painful to even think about, much less talk about, but it is important to talk
about what happened.
In 
All the Bright Places
, Finch worries a lot about labels. There is,
unfortunately, a good deal of stigma surrounding suicide and mental illness.
When my great-grandfather died, people gossiped. Although his widow and
his three children never spoke about what happened that day, they felt silently
judged and, to some extent, ostracized. I lost my friend to suicide a year
before I lost my father to cancer. They were both ill at the same time, and they
died within fourteen months of each other, but the reaction to their illnesses
and deaths could not have been more different. People rarely bring flowers to
a suicide.
It was only when writing this book that I learned my own label—Survivor
After Suicide, or Survivor of Suicide. Fortunately, there are numerous
resources to help me make sense of this tragic thing that happened and how it
affects me, just as there are numerous resources to help anyone, teen or adult,
who is struggling with emotional upheaval, depression, anxiety, mental
instability, or suicidal thoughts.
Often, mental and emotional illnesses go undiagnosed because the person
suffering symptoms is too ashamed to speak up, or because their loved ones
either fail to or choose not to recognize the signs. According to Mental Health
America, an estimated 2.5 million Americans are known to have bipolar
disorder, but the actual number is a good two to three times higher than that.
As many as 80 percent of people with this illness go undiagnosed or
misdiagnosed.
If you think something is wrong, speak up.
You are not alone.
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It is not your fault.
Help is out there.