Aimee Duffy MD & Madie Duffy on Daily Flash Talk About Suicide Awareness Month! 50TH NEWS SEGMENT!!!

Introduction to Suicide Prevention Awareness 0:00

Welcome back to Daily Flash. KSA Entertainment believes in helping our communities by turning a bright spotlight on awareness initiatives. September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, and our next guests have decided to go public with their very personal story. Please welcome Dr. Amy Duffy and her daughter Maddie Duffey to daily flash.

Maddie's First Signs and Crisis 0:28

Good to see both of you. Thank you for coming in. This is a tough subject. It's not an easy one to discuss. Maddy, let me start with you when did you first start having thoughts of suicide? When I was 13, I started cutting myself and really strongly thinking about taking my own life. I never knew it was going to be as scary as it became until I in the back of that cop car getting driven to the mental institution. If that would be like summer camp, this was no summer camps. And as a mom, Amy, what's going through your mind in having this experience and watching your daughter being put into the bag of a police car?

I mean, you can imagine how scary it is watching you 13-year-old daughter come to you for help and end up getting put in a car. You know, in the back of a police car, literally with a modern day straight jacket, I am a physician, you know. I'm a doctor.

Amy's Perspective as a Parent 1:26

It's bright in your face. You're right on the money there. The shoulda, coulda woulda. Your a doctor, you should have seen this eye. This is your daughter, it's a mother's intuition. Was there something that happened that sort of sparked your interest and said something's not right? Well it was Christmas Day, we were sitting around the table playing Irishopoly and we live in South Carolina so it is warm. Maddie was in shorts and I just noticed that she had cuts on this side of her leg. and she originally said they were the cat scratches or something, and I knew that wasn't quite right.

So there was a little signs early, but then this experience of her getting a bit worse, we talked about therapy, she tried a lit bit, thought she was feeling better, then suddenly came to me one Wednesday morning, five months later, having been up all night cutting herself with a razor that she deconstructed from the bathroom shower. So that was a very scary experience, and that led us to the hospital, which prompted the drive to that hospital mental institution in the back of a cop car. And there maybe have been family dynamics come into play with mom and dad, is that right?

Family Stress and Social Pressure 2:25

Yeah, so we actually let her know that day on Christmas Day when we found out that he was cutting through that conversation that we were actually going forward with the divorce. We were definitely having a stressful time. She's number two out of four girls. So we had a busy life in a business household. Definitely for me, having the mom guilt of being blindsided a little bit, but also just caught up in my own stuff and not really being able to recognize what was going on. And Maddie, why did you not feel comfortable going to your parents or even your siblings for help to say, hey, I'm not feeling quite right now?

I don't know. It was seventh, eighth grade, so everyone else was doing it too. Oh, and so there's social pressure. Yes, yeah. I was following the cliche, not so much with the cutting, but kind of acting sad, posting sad stuff on my Snapchat story.

Warning Signs: Withdrawal and Sleep Changes 3:14

Kind of all hit all at once. And did you feed off of that? Because I think a lot of times people go to social media, they're feeling sorry for themselves because they want attention. Was that kind of what you were doing? Definitely. I was feeding off all the other negative that I making myself. Which made it even worse, right? Made it worse. You've created a list of questions, a quiz for parents, and we've got some of them. We want you to walk us through a few of these signs. The first one, you've gotten sudden loss of interest.

If you notice your child has got a sudden lost of interests in something they love, that could be a sign. Yeah. Yeah, well, I lost all motivation to do anything, whether it was school, youth group, sports, even just hanging out with my friends. I didn't want to it. And that's a big sign. You also say social withdrawal. Yeah. So in the same boat, I noticed Maddie staying in her room a lot, not really wanting to be part of the family events. We're having dinner. Do you want to come up? Wearing your hoodie all the time.

And again, we see these.

Warning Signs: Appetite, Grades, and Hygiene 4:15

These are signs that you see all time, always on your phone, headphones, just really isolating yourself from the world. Yeah, and just entrenched in a social media world, which is not healthy altogether. Changes in sleep patterns. Were you not sleeping? No, I was not sleepy. Really? Yeah. I would staying up from one or two, even three o'clock in the morning, just on my phone doing nothing. And then I got my foam taken at night. Still stayed up, Just doing Nothing and would find myself falling asleep in class almost every single day.

Wow. Okay. Loss of appetite or change in eating habits. So I noticed Number one, all the kids took their lunch to school and Maddie stopped taking her lunch box. She didn't want to do that. I don't know if it was lack of appetite or just it wasn't cool to have a lunchbox in middle school, but we'd have breakfast ready in the morning and she just, I'm not hungry. All the time, not hunger. Gosh, and you've also got a couple of other ones on the list, decline in academic performance and loss of interest in personal hygiene.

Yeah, I was a straight A student in the seventh grade. Maddie, really? And in my eighth grade year with three Cs and a super low B.

Message of Hope and Getting Help 5:14

Wow. OK, what's the message you want people to take away from your book? Why can't she see me? But really just for people to recognize that this is not uncommon. And like you heard, you know, a lot of kids are going through that, and that seems to be the cool thing to do, but really reaching out for help, talking to a friend, another adult, parent, if you can. Once I knew what was going on with Maddie, then we could move forward and really get her the help. So she doesn't have to experience what she went through.

If we can just one life, one that we change, preferably save, that's really what our goal is. MD.com is the website for more information. Ladies, thank you so much for sharing your story. Thank you.