https://twitter.com/CSUBucsSoftball/stat...DDeBA&s=19

Statement from the softball coaching staff on Lauren Bernett on JMUSports.com.

https://jmusports.com/news/2022/4/29/jmu...rnett.aspx

Brian

It's great to see softball teams across the nation recognizing Lauren and drawing attention to the need for increased mental health support.

that's just a few I've seen, there are many more.

(04-30-2022 10:40 AM)Bill Wrote:  that's just a few I've seen, there are many more.

So many more - including a few of our recent opponents from regionals and super regionals Michigan and UCLA. Also saw the likes of UCF, Oregon, etc. It only gets better if we keep talking about it.

Condolences to her immediate family and softball family. Such an absolute heartbreaker. It’s an absolute tear jerker seeing coach LaPorte embracing Bourne.

You know this time last year the girls were ripping through the competition and making JMU a national entity. Now we are a national entity in another regard. JMU is the best place in the world. What CC and the girls did last year is of equal what LB memory’s is doing now. Take care of each other, check in on your friends and loved ones. We are all Dukes.

(04-26-2022 05:18 PM)DoubleDogDare Wrote:  

(04-26-2022 03:59 PM)DWING Wrote:  

(04-26-2022 02:56 PM)jmu98 Wrote:  Considering JMU put out the following tweet after the tweet in regards to her death I would think that unfortunately that she took her life. No matter what the reason it is still extremely sad.

https://twitter.com/JMUSports/status/151...9573947393

Not necessarily, her teammates and friends, not to even mention family, will have grief to deal with from this news and may need a mental health resource

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

JMU pushed the same hotline numbers following the Bridgewater shooting, so I agree it doesn't necessarily mean anything, but I would be more surprised if an official investigation came up with anything else.

EDIT: I thought it was just in response to Bridgewater but looking back at the date it was published (2/7), it was the same day as the parking garage incident, which was also a week after a student took their own life that I had forgotten about.

If young adults were dropping dead at this rate for any other disease, everything would come to a screeching halt until we figured out what to do.

I don't have any answers, but I hope we can figure something out.

(04-28-2022 06:47 AM)hiroshimacarp Wrote:  

(04-27-2022 05:02 PM)orange-to-purple Wrote:  

(04-27-2022 04:36 PM)hburg Wrote:  Mental health is a major problem and it needs to be addressed better.

Sent from my SM-G988U using Tapatalk

Yes it should be. There should be more and better facilities to deal with it. There should be more available beds. Insurance should stop telling people how many visits they can have with a mental health practitioner (of any kind) and should stop telling people what kinds of drugs they might be allowed to take that make them feel better, and stop telling practitioners that one drug is the same as or equal to another when that is expressly not the case.

What steps are you willing to take to help that happen? Much of it starts with your elected officials. Think about that and then act on it.

Stepping off my soapbox now.

i'm a family doc in pennsylvania and you pretty much outline all of my frustrations. if i had somebody walk into my office today saying they were prepared to do take their life...my only option is to send them to the ed and cross my fingers they'll do the right things for her. there's no guarantee they'll admit her and she could wait for hours if not days to be placed. it's a demoralizing process.

i don't have the option to call a psychiatry colleague and know she'll get in. we basically give a list of options or ask them to call their insurance. i just had a patient with substance abuse but clear anxiety/depression who was declined by psychiatry because they felt the substance abuse needed to be treated first. don't they go together? shouldn't we be addressing both at the same time?

the only way politics plays in is that we've lost the ability to sit down and work out problems like adults. it's not just health care or mental health care where this is one of our biggest weaknesses. we pass along the thoughts and prayers, encourage people to seek help, but then don't do anything to create that help. i feel the pressure in my office to be the psychiatrist and counselor in a 20 minute visit because i know there's often nowhere else to turn.

the bad cycle is just going to continue...like it will with all our other problems.

I think an unavoidable problem to living in a country this large (and the by-far-wealthiest one to boot) is that building a policy that works well for everyone is damn near impossible to understand top-to-bottom. So we have to delegate, which means we have to trust those who make the policy to understand it, and even *if* they all had the very best intentions and competence, that still wouldn't be perfect. And that's before you include well-intentioned lobbying (such as "be sure to include alternative medicine"), semi-well-intentioned lobbying ("our profit margins subsidize innovation that serves the whole world"), flat-out-cynical lobbying ("treating symptoms is a reliable profit stream but curing the disease loses me a customer"), and the myriad (legitimate) interest groups such as suicide prevention, this or that rare-but-unthinkably-awful disease, and all of that is BEFORE the lying crooks that you can't keep away, and the blowhards who will gladly sidetrack the discussion to avoid progress on the topic or to promote their own agenda, or just to win votes to get into better orgies.

Anyway, yes, our system sucks, and the policymakers aren't getting anywhere. But if someone handed me the keys and the checkbook, while I'm sure I could fix a few things, I don't know that do all that much better.

(04-28-2022 07:57 AM)JMad03 Wrote:  I think the biggest problem with mental disorders is perception. Some people are afraid to get help. Some don't want to get help. Some don't think they need help. There are infinite reasons.

I also think that even if tomorrow everyone was able to speak about all their problems, we still would have a long way to go. The mind is MUCH more complicated than the knee, shoulder, or liver. If I could take an MRI of my brain and get an answer for why I'm unhappy, I'd be delighted.

Anyway, thank you for opening up about this - these kinds of conversations are really important.

Here is Lauren's obituary. She sounds like she was such a lively and interesting person.

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/obs...d=34565883

Very kind of the family to suggest donations to the JMU softball team in lieu of gifts.

I do hope this offseason can bring healing.
This team is perhaps going to need our support now even more than this season.

Sadly, tragedy is hitting the young athletes at far too alarming of a pace. Used to be the rare occurrence of a Hank Gathers or Korey Stringer, now there’s too many instances of high school, college and pros are having heart ir other health conditions or fighting depression and anxiety.

In reading the obituary it sounds like her brother passed away at a fairly young age as well. What a horrible things for a family to go through losing a fairly young adult child not once but twice.

I know there was a non student who took their life on campus. Have there been others this year? I heard from someone that there were others but I had not hear of them.