Suicide Prevention 24-Hour Hotlines
• San Diego County Crisis Line: (888) 724-7240
• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: (800) 273-8255
• Trans Lifelife: (877) 565-860
Diary of a Diva, a long-running San Diego Reader column, takes on a topic Wednesday that writer Barbarella Fokos has never shared in public before. She describes what it's like for her to live with depression.
Fokos said the death by suicide of Kurt Cunningham, a San Diego mental health advocate and an acquaintance, propelled her deeper into her latest bout with depression and compelled her to talk about it publicly.
"I write about my anxiety a lot, mostly because it's easier — somehow more acceptable-feeling — to write about anxiety than depression," she said in a Facebook post in October. "I never expected someone like Kurt, someone who worked so hard to spread the word about suicide prevention, would succumb to the demons that I am all too familiar with."
Fokos will discuss her experience with depression Wednesday on Midday Edition.