Healing After Hailey: How Danbury Unites After a Teen Suicide

DANBURY, CT — Shortly after 16-year-old Hailey Nailor of Danbury took her own life on Feb. 9, her best friend began organizing a memorial vigil online.

"She was a great friend to me and always had my back through everything as well to many others," Maria Garcia wrote on Facebook. "It’s heartbreaking to know she went the way she did and I wish with every ounce of me I could of helped her make the right decision or someone else could have. But for her I would like to hold a Candlelight Vigil for her to celebrate her life and get her story out there and show her that people did care about her."

The appeal was wildly successful, garnering over 450 shares in a short period. But experts who convened a day after the post feared a "contagion effect," and succeeded in getting the vigil canceled.

“Dedicating public vigils after a suicide has been found to potentially increase the risk of suicide in other vulnerable individuals, and can have a contagious effect, especially with youth," explained Diana Shaw, MPH, the public information officer for the Fairfield County Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. "However, always with the awareness and approval of the surviving family, national guidance provides recommendations that survivors can use to plan open discussions, in safe environments that include the presence of local mental health providers who can connect people to resources.”

The county DMHAS, based in Bridgeport, offers an enormous portfolio of public health services,
including services for problem gamblers, jail diversion, psychosocial rehabilitation, opioid addiction, veterans, and the LGBT community.

Stressing that the decision on how to heal is ultimately up to the community, DMAS Commissioner Miriam Delphin-Rittmon, PhD, made it clear the straightest path to healing begins with the smaller circles of loved ones.

"You need to work with the family, and with the other students,” she said. “The school may be having people on site to be able to talk with the students and to help them to express their feelings, or what this is bringing up for them, or where they're at. Sometimes faith-based communities can be places of support and healing for individuals and families as well."

Grief counselors have indeed been on-site at Danbury High School since Monday, the first school day since Hailey's death. She was a student there, when treatment for her mood disorder, depression and anxiety allowed. The district has indicated it is taking the opportunity to review its procedures and services connected to students’ mental health.

Delphin-Rittmon suggested "awareness-building, or anti-stigma-related events associated with mental health and wellness, and/or depression and suicide."

She stressed that education be at the core of every mental health initiative, in large part because society still has not shaken the stigma free from the sickness.

"There can be other ways, panel-related or public forums, that give people information about the services and support that are available, [events that] give them hope to see that recovery is very real and possible. There is robust treatment available for depression, and people live full and meaningful lives even with a diagnosis of depression."

The key, of course, is to keep from ever needing to have a debate about a teen suicide memorial, ever again. The DMAS has a suggestion for that, as well.

"I want people to know that if they are struggling, they do not have to struggle alone," Delphin-Rittmon said. "Call 2-1-1. That is Emergency Mobil Psychiatric Services, who is geared more toward youth. An EMPS team can come out and meet people in their home, wherever they are, to lend support and get them connected to services."

Photo of Hailey Nailor via Danbury PD from a 2017 missing person alert.