Author twice widowed by suicide seeks to help others

A woman twice widowed by suicide wants to change the way Americans think about people who take their own lives.

Marci Glidden Savage, a 64-year-old mother of three who owns a packaging supply company in Southern California, says she wrote the new book “And No One Saw It Coming” about the suicides of her spouses Paul and Michael to challenge social stigmas about mental illness.

“I think mental illness needs to be treated like any other illness and death by suicide should be treated like death by cancer or any other horrible disease,” Ms. Savage said in an interview.

“When Michael died, I Googled ‘widowed by suicide twice’ and nothing populated. I sat back and thought I can’t be the only one.”

Ms. Savage said she learned that many people feel too embarrassed or ashamed to talk about suicide.

“This particular manner of death is treated so differently than any other,” she said. “The social stigmas that surround not only suicide but mental health, and the pre-conceived notions people have had all their lives about those deaths, come to the forefront when someone dies this way.”

Before losing her spouses, she held many of those stigmas herself.

“I was completely wrong in thinking suicide is a choice. I also didn’t understand the depth of emotional pain that leads someone to take their own life,” Ms. Savage said.

Her first marriage, to a college sweetheart named Paul who cofounded the family business with her in 1989, lasted from 1980 to 2014, producing two sons and a daughter.

She found him dead on their backyard patio two days after comedian Robin Williams took his own life.

“We had an amazing marriage,” she said. “I learned that it’s possible to have a great marriage, with things going well, and your partner still doesn’t share his deepest challenges. It’s possible you won’t see it coming.”

She thought at first that she could have stopped him had she come home from work earlier, but she gradually realized there was no way she could have known.

“There was nothing more I could have done. I wasn’t responsible for it and I’m not powerful enough to change destiny,” Ms. Savage said.

She met her second husband, a corporate executive named Michael, two years after Paul died. Their marriage from 2018 to 2019 lasted eight months before he took his life.

“Both my husbands were Type A personalities who worried about business, struggled with anxiety about work issues and suffered depression,” she said. “They struggled with that for a very long time like someone would struggle with a terminal illness.”

The author said she believes social stigmas prevent many men in particular from seeking help for emotional struggles.

“They’re very good at hiding what they’re feeling and I sometimes think people living with depression and anxiety become so used to it that they don’t understand how they do feel,” Ms. Savage said.

Some psychologists affirmed her insights.

“When we say someone ‘committed suicide,’ we are treating it like a crime,” said Jaclyn Halpern, who works at the Washington Behavioral Medicine Associates in Chevy Chase, Maryland. “When we instead change the language and say they ‘died by suicide,’ it is far easier to see the tragedy and pain.”

People struggling with suicidal thoughts often keep silent to avoid being shamed, she added.

“As with much of mental health, suicidal thoughts are often stigmatized, so people fear reaching out for help. And family members may not know the warning signs,” Dr. Halpern said. “De-stigmatizing suicidal thoughts and urges is so important so that people can access the support that exists.”

Thomas Plante, a professor of psychology at Santa Clara University, said Ms. Savage’s insights about the reluctance of men to get help seemed “spot on” to him.

“Sadly and tragically, stigma about mental health concerns still exists, and men, in particular, are all too often reluctant to discuss or seek help for troubles such as anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and so forth,” Mr. Plante said.

Despite the ability of doctors to treat anxiety and depression, he said many people of both sexes never seek help.

“So often people resort to suicide in an attempt to solve a temporary problem with a permanent solution,” Mr. Plante said. “Our society has a long way to go to destigmatize mental health problems so that people feel more comfortable seeking help and talking more openly about them to their loved ones.”

Parenting educator Laura Linn Knight, who also lost a loved one to suicide, said struggling adults deserve the same attention as struggling children.

“Although suicide is not something that one can always prevent, we can sometimes see signs for a person who is becoming suicidal,” Ms. Knight said. “Such signs may include anxiety, depression, a family history of suicide or previous suicide attempts, alcohol or substance abuse issues, a feeling of hopelessness and other withdrawing behaviors.”

She encouraged people struggling with suicidal thoughts or loved ones to call a support hotline.

In her book, which was released in January, Ms. Savage also encourages social support for loved ones struggling with anxiety and depression.

“When someone gets stents put into his heart or starts cancer treatment, people rally around him,” she said.

Engaged to be married for the third time, she acknowledged the world has not gotten any easier during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I have not given up on life at all, and I think that’s very healthy,” Ms. Savage said. “We’ve all come out of these couple years of COVID understanding what it’s like when the world changes overnight. I think it’s a good time to understand.”