At 23, Julie Boledovich Farhat decided to leave her boyfriend, three siblings and beloved hometown in Michigan to focus on saving her mother.
After watching her mom, Gail Boledovich, battle schizophrenia for three years and suffer from hallucinations and delusions, Julie resolved to take an engineering job in Bowling Green, Ky., and buy a house where her mom could live with her and have a beautiful garden and even an art studio to create her mosaics. Gail would be spared the stress of having to work or pay bills. Everything would work out, Julie thought.
But Gail Boledovich never made it to Kentucky. She took her own life on May 1, 2005, two days before her 49th birthday. She died from an overdose of prescription-strength Benadryl pills that doctors had prescribed to her to help her sleep at night. Boledovich took the lethal dose in the middle of the day.
Farhat’s mom could have been anyone’s mom, or aunt — or wife.
The article goes into statistics, about reasons, etc., but what I found interesting was when they went back to Farhat:
“Mental illness is a real debilitating illness,” Farhat says. “But unlike someone who is physically disabled, no one holds the door open for a person on the street having hallucinations.”I wish every person realised this. Mental illness is real, it is devastating. I'm glad she and her siblings took their pain public and did something to change how people are perceived and how to keep others from dying.
In honor of her mother, Farhat, now 30, and her three siblings started Mind Over Matter (MOM), a small nonprofit aimed at promoting mental health awareness and raising money for research and suicide prevention in Michigan.
“Society puts so much emphasis on how these people die, but I loved my mom — the way she died had nothing to do with the person she was.”
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