Today is National Depression Screening Day. The team at the Calgary Counselling Centre where I am working as the Interim Director of Communications has been working hard over the past few weeks to have everything ready for today’s events.

The test is live. It’s fast. Easy and anonymous. Anyone can take it. Everyone should. If only to know they are not at risk of depression. And if they are, to inform themselves so that they can do something about it.

Untreated, depression can kill. One in five Canadians will suffer a depressive episode and only 20% will seek treatment. Untreated, no matter how mild it begins, depression can deepen and in its deepening, you can sink below the ‘healthy’ state of being into that place where the only way out appears as the option no one should ever take. Suicide.

I know a lot about suicidal thinking. For much of the 4 years 9 months that I was in that relationship from hell, I wanted to die. I wanted to erase my presence from earth, erase all memory of my passing through this world from the minds of those I love. I did not want my journey to be one of pain and wanted to do everything I could to take away the pain I had caused my daughters, family, friends. And the only way I thought I could do that was to take my own life.

I am grateful today that I never did it. At the time, not doing it wasn’t through lack of ruminating on ways of doing it or imagining the release of my pain if I did. I didn’t do it because I didn’t want to. My not doing it was because I was too scared that if I did, my daughters would take it to mean I didn’t love them. And I didn’t want them to live with that belief. Because in that belief is the seed of the idea that they were to blame for my not loving them which would in cascade into the nullifying belief that they were unlovable. And that was too painful for me to conceive of. I couldn’t do it to them. I couldn’t leave them with that belief.

And so, instead, I disappeared in the hopes they would forget about me.

Isn’t life amazing?

From the deepest darkest pockets of my despair has grown this incredible life of joy and love and passion.

Taking care of our mental health is important.

And it can begin with a simple test that will give each of us a benchmark on where we’re at in our emotional well-being today.

At the Centre’s website today, Craig Lester has written a powerful blog about his journey through depression. Two years ago, he didn’t know why he was feeling so negative and despairing until he took the test last year. Now, Craig is filled with life. He has dreams and is working to make them real. And, he’s speaking out.

You can too.

Speak. Speak out. You make a difference.

Every 40 seconds, somewhere in the world someone takes their own life.

From my own experience of having been in that place where suicide felt like the only way out, I know how challenging it is to speak up FOR life. My voice had become so silent, my being present in this world so still, I did not believe I had the capacity to speak up or move from that dark tunnel of fear I inhabited.

Now I know I can. And in my speaking up I want everyone to know, no matter how dark the moment, how deep their despair, there is help. Reach for it. There are hands waiting to reach back.

Even when you feel no one will be there. Even when you tell yourself there is no point, it’s futile, no one’s listening, watching, caring. Reach out. You don’t have to speak. You don’t have to say a word. Just reach. And keep reaching. Keep moving into and through the fear all is lost. Keep reaching for the phone to call the Distress Centre. Keep reaching for the hand next to yours. Keep reaching out of yourself into the world around you.

Today is National Depression Screening Day. Please take the test and tell everyone you know about it. You could help save a life.