Bruce Shuttleworth (MBA 1997)
(illustration by Gisela Goppel)

Bruce Shuttleworth (MBA 1997)
(illustration by Gisela Goppel)

We all know someone who has committed suicide. Oftentimes they are the most unlikely of candidates, highly accomplished and outwardly healthy, with everything to live for. I’ve lost several folks you never would have thought would be candidates for depression. One example is a friend of mine, a former F-18 squadron commander with all kinds of crazy degrees, a beautiful family, and a pedigree that went back to the Mayflower. Another was a squadron mate with whom I flew one of my last and most enjoyable flights. He was downright bubbly as we put on an impromptu air show over an Adirondack lake. Yet another had pages of combat time; he wrote my letter of recommendation for HBS.

Those losses and more since helped to inspire my work as a board member at Give an Hour, a nonprofit that develops national networks of volunteer mental health professionals who can provide free, confidential care to individuals experiencing an acute or chronic need for help. Our initial focus was veterans and their families, but we’ve since broadened that to a number of populations, including at-risk youth, survivors of domestic violence, refugees, immigrants, and first responders. We also help grief-stricken areas, whether it’s a community recovering from a natural disaster or the site of a mass shooting. Meeting with the survivors of Parkland was one of the most emotionally exhausting days of my life.

Suicide is incomprehensible on some level, especially when the individual concerned has all the external indicators of success and accomplishment. What we do understand is that one in four Americans has a diagnosable mental illness, and whatever success or social status a person enjoys doesn’t exempt them, or their children, from that reality. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, just as we wouldn’t be ashamed to admit we have an issue with our heart. But having that degree of openness is a challenge that we still need to address—and part of the process is talking about it.

That’s what we did at our 20th HBS reunion a few years ago. We decided to put aside the suggested section case discussion to instead share the personal challenges that no one escapes life without. It was unbelievably powerful to hear about the struggles with isolation, depression, and feelings of not measuring up, especially from those who by most conventional measures had indeed measured up. Many offline conversations spun out of that; moments of honesty and openness did an amazing amount of good. It’s an experience that dovetails with Give an Hour’s Change Direction initiative, which brings together people from the private, nonprofit, and public sectors to open up the dialogue around mental illness and help build awareness of the five indicators of emotional suffering: change in personality, agitation, withdrawal, decline in personal care, and hopelessness.

Just as we have minimum daily allowances for vitamins and exercise, we should have requirements for healthy levels of engagement and community involvement. Social media makes it harder to detect how people are really feeling, and there’s no widely accepted metric for measuring the negative effects of social isolation—or the positive impact of meaningful interaction. All too often, mental illness is an invisible enemy. Let’s be proactive in routinely addressing depression as an aspect of simple wellness—and of productivity, if you want to look at it from a bottom-line perspective. Talk about mental illness. Know the signs. And stay connected: We’re all one big tribe.

A former Naval aviator, Bruce Shuttleworth serves on the board of Give an Hour and is an active volunteer for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

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