After Suicide, a Move Out of the Darkness

COURT HOUSE — It has been six years since family practitioner, Dr. Richard Renza lost his daughter to depression.
Twenty-seven-year-old Richelle Renza Dwight, a 1991 graduate of Middle Township High School, had been married for three months when she developed an acute depression.
A successful Gettysburg College graduate and pharmaceutical sales representative with Bristol Myers Squibb, she moved to Charlotte, N.C. two years before with her husband Bryan Dwight, a member of the Coast Guard formerly stationed in Cape May.
On the day she took her life, Renza Dwight visited the outpatient treatment facility where she’d been pursuing treatment and was told her insurance coverage had expired after 20 visits. Little more than a week before, Renza Dwight was released from a hospital psychiatric unit after a suicidal overdose.
“There is no limit on the number of times I can treat a patient suffering from high-blood pressure, diabetes, or heart disease, but there is a limit on the number of times someone is covered for treatment of a mental illness,” her father told the Herald.
This is just one of the issues the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) is trying to change in the hope that education, awareness, and treatment will prevent families and friends from suffering the loss of a loved one to suicide.
According to the AFSP, a person dies by suicide about every 16 minutes in this country, a statistic that increased from every 18 minutes in 2003.
Of the 44 million Americans who suffer from a mental health disorder, only one-third receive treatment, citing lack of insurance and cost as the leading factors.
The foundation fosters remembrance and an outlook of hope by gathering those who have lost loved ones to depression and suicide, or personally struggled with the issues themselves for national Out of the Darkness Overnight walks; 20-mile fund-raising walks to support research to improve understanding of biological, genetic and psycho-social factors that con-tribute to suicide, development of national centers to evaluate the effectiveness of suicide prevention treatments, creation of survivor support groups and local suicide prevention programs.
As the walks are staged from dusk until dawn, they are intended to literally and symbolically bring the issues of depression and suicide into the light.
Shortly after Renza Dwight passed away in April of 2001, Tricia Summers, her college roommate, and life-long friend Karen Turnier approached Renza with information about the first walk to be held in Washington D.C. in 2002.
Team Renza walked for the first time then; a group of Richelle’s high school and college class-mates, friends, and family, each agreed to raise $1,000 for the cause.
“We had a lot of sup-port in raising dollars from many of the medical staff at Cape Regional Medical Center, family, friends and also from my patients,” Renza told the Herald.
In July of 2005, Team Renza walked again in Chicago, joining over 2,000 participants in a route originating at Soldier field, circling the lakefront.
The team has completed four national Out of the Darkness Overnight walks and other smaller, daytime Out of the Darkness Community walks in the Philadelphia area.
The national walks are all held through the night; including short opening ceremonies of reflection and motivation before the crowd sets out at 8 p.m. on a clearly marked route. Rest stops are located approximately every two miles and the AFSP provides assistance vehicles in case a walker is tired or needs assistance. Walks end at 5 a.m. with a closing ceremony celebrating the accomplishment of the community as they re-turn to the starting point. In the case of the New York City walk on June 9 and 10 of this year, a luminaria was set at South Street Seaport. Team Renza walked in memory of their sister, daughter, and friend with a crowd of thou-sands there.
The AFSP has raised a net total of $3.8 million for depression and suicide research and sup-port efforts through the walks.
Renza Dwight was the commencement speaker at her Middle Township graduation.
A bout with an eating disorder as a teen led her to counsel Gettysburg classmates about how to overcome the problem. She left behind two brothers, Ricky and Ryan, her sister Renee, her mother, father, stepmother, and an extended family of friends and admirers.
Her physician father says he still doesn’t know exactly what happened. “It happened very fast. It may have been some sort of imbalance, or bi-polar; there’s no way of knowing for sure,” Renza said.
The AFSP offers a list of warning signs for suicide which includes; observable signs of serious depression including an unrelenting low mood, pessimism, hopelessness, desperation, anxiety, withdrawl, and sleep problems, increased alcohol or other drug use, increased impulsiveness and taking unnecessary risks, threatening suicide, or expressing a strong wish to die, giving away possessions, and unexpected rage or anger.
The foundation notes that while most depressed people are not suicidal, most suicidal people are depressed.
The focused effort of the foundation is to prevent suicide through early recognition and the treatment of depression and other psychiatric illnesses, as awareness may be the only way to spread truth about a condition shrouded in stigma.
Renza established The Richelle Renza Dwight Endowed Memorial Scholarship Fund at Gettysburg College for students pursuing a career in the health care field.
Team Renza will join the next national walk, June 7-8, 2008, in New York City.
A second national walk will be held next year in Seattle June 21-22.
Community walks are held throughout the country. A 5K initiating from the Oscar E. McClinton Waterfront Park in Atlantic City will be held August 18 at 9 a.m.
For more information about suicide prevention and Out of the Darkness Overnight walks visit: www.outofthedarkness.org.