Whenever San Jose State alum Reggie Burton looked at his son Avery Burton, he saw a smart, athletic overachiever with a bright future.
In the summer of 2017, Burton was delighted that his 22-year-old was about to pursue his dream: Getting a a PhD in physical therapy so he could help people recover from injuries. He never imagined that Avery was privately overwhelmed by depression, saw himself as worthless and thought he had to die.
On July 24, 2017, Avery drove to the bridge crossing the Colorado RIver, near the Hoover Dam and the family’s home outside Las Vegas. There Avery left his car and iPhone. In a suicide note posted to Facebook, Avery wrote that his death was “nobody’s fault …. I was living a fake life.”
Like other parents whose children die by suicide, a grieving Burton was left to pore through his own memories, as well his son’s social media posts and other writings, to try to understand what happened and what he had missed.
“I had blinders on,” admitted Burton, a former reporter who runs a PR firm in Las Vegas. “When you look at my son outwardly, he was the image of a kid who was just excelling. But the signs were there.”
The search to better understand the major depressive episode that afflicted Avery is the subject of Burton’s new book, “This Is Depression” (Rushmore Press, $10). Burton will do a book signing at Barnes & Noble Blossom Hill in San Jose at 10 a.m. on Sept. 14.
Burton said he wrote the book because Avery’s death revealed how little he and his wife Ann Burton understood about mental illness. He wanted to help other parents identify when their adolescent and young adult children are struggling.
Statistics show why parents should pay attention: One in four college students suffers from depression. The suicide rate among Americans, ages 15 to 24, has reached its highest level since 1960, and suicide is the second leading cause of death for this age group.
Burton thinks these statistics should resonate at this time of year, as the school year ramps up at Stanford, UC Berkeley, San Jose State and other schools.
Helen Hsu, a staff psychologist for Stanford’s counseling services, said Burton’s book offers an important family perspective that focuses on an age group when mental illness tends to surface. In her practice, Hsu regularly sees students whose anxiety is in part fed by the high expectations placed on young people in achievement-oriented Bay Area communities.
“Young people these days are feeling a bit scared and anxious and hopeless,” said Hsu. “There are wars, environmental devastation, economic worries and the feeling that if I don’t become the next start-up founder, I’ll be a pauper.”
Shortly before Avery died, Burton assured his son that he had set himself up for a great life. Avery graduated with honors from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas in May 2017 and was preparing to apply to a selective doctoral program at the school.
But depression doesn’t discriminate. “It doesn’t care about your socioeconomic status,” Burton said. “When your brain starts to fail and the chemistry doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from.”
As a young boy, Avery had a slight stutter and was a bit introverted, but gained confidence as he got older, his father wrote. Avery thrived on new challenges, learning to play tennis the summer before high school so he could make the school team. In high school, he was a three-sport athlete, a natural leader and had a “squad” of friends who looked up to him, his father said.
In college, Avery worked out and ate healthfully. Burton teased his son that his “ripped” abs could help him launch a successful modeling career if graduate school didn’t work out.
“In the top 20 things I worried about with my sons, depression and mental illness were 41,” said Burton. “With all my kids, I thought I knew their strengths or weaknesses. Other than they don’t clean their rooms, they stayed on top of the things they needed to be on top of.”
A therapist later told Burton that stress over going to graduate school probably spurred Avery’s depression. Avery told his mother, “Mommy, life is hard” — and he told his father he wasn’t sure he had the people skills needed to be a therapist.
Burton was puzzled by his son’s sudden loss of confidence. Avery tried to hide his depression, but Burton said he also wasn’t cognizant of the classic warning signs: Avery had begun to withdraw from friends and lose weight. Digestive issues that had bothered him since high school recurred. Burton later learned that Avery had started to drink more and use marijuana to self-medicate.
Several weeks after Avery’s graduate school “freakout,” Burton received a text from one of his son’s friends saying he had talked about suicide, but didn’t want his parents to know. Burton and his wife didn’t bring it up, worried they would make things worse. Instead, they hoped to ease his mind by taking a family vacation to Southern California. Avery seemed in good spirits during the trip.
Burton wishes he had talked to Avery about his suicidal thoughts. He later learned that it’s important to be direct and ask depressed people if they’re considering suicide and to let them know that others care. “If he was already thinking that, it wouldn’t have put the idea into his head,” Burton said.
Over the past two years, Burton has tried to get past blaming himself, accepting his son’s word that no one else is at fault. Still, Burton hopes that sharing his son’s story could make a difference for another family.
“I wrote the book to honor my son’s memory and to reduce the stigma around depression,” he said. “No family should go through what we went through. It’s 100 percent preventable.”
If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or considering suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
