Some of you will recall a post from May, when I wrote about Jason Aaron Arkin, an Overland park man and Blue Valley West graduate who was saddled with depression and committed suicide five days before his 21st birthday.
I didn’t know Jason — never heard of him — and the only thing that called his attention to me was his obituary, written by a former girlfriend.
The obit contained this memorable and touching line:
“Jason struggled with clinical depression and ultimately passed due to his illness. Jason was one of many young adults suffering with mental illnesses in a time when mental illness remains stigmatized and misunderstood.”
Jason
After I posted my column, Jason’s mother, Karen Arkin, called and said, among other things, that she and her husband, Steve Arkin, planned to start a foundation to help people better understand mental illness.
They still do, and you couldn’t have two better people behind a movement like that because both are neurologists. They fully understood what their son was going through and got him the best professional help available, but their best efforts couldn’t rid Jason of his demons.
…That’s a long lead-up to the latest Arkin-story developments, which KC Star freelance reporter Roxie Hammill wrote about at length in this week’s “913,” section, which goes to Kansas subscribers of the printed edition. (Note: Why The Star did not put this story on A1 is not only a mystery but a miscarriage of journalism.)
Hammill is married to longtime Star reporter Mike Hendricks, and she is an excellent reporter and writer in her own right.
The “news peg” for her story was a walk that was held in Jason’s memory last Sunday at Congregation Beth Torah in Overland Park.
The most interesting part of Hammill’s story, to me, was her in-depth treatment of what triggered Jason’s depression: Perfectionism.
Hammill said that Karen and Steve Arkin recognized before Jason was even 10 that he was having more than ordinary difficulty handling the ups and downs of childhood.
Hammill quoted Karen as saying:
From the time he was just very, very young it was apparent he was very hard on himself. It was just silly things. You couldn’t play a board game with him. If he didn’t win it was just so unpleasant…The first time we took him to play soccer he went nuts because he didn’t score a goal the first game.
Karen thought Jason would outgrow the perfectionism, but he didn’t. Fortunately, it didn’t keep him from making friends and tending to their emotional needs.
Hammill wrote: “The Arkins said Jason would listen and advise his friends when they brought him their troubles, and that he had even deterred two girl friends who were talking about suicide.”
Antidepressants didn’t take care of the problem, and Jason once told his parents he felt the collective pain of the world.
While attending Northwestern University, where he was studying electrical engineering, Jason got temporary relief from an extraordinary treatment called transcranial magnetic stimulation, which stimulates the connections in the left frontal cortex of the brain.
But the relief didn’t last, and he sank back down.
The end came on May 19, after a student had found Jason in a lounge having a seizure about 4:30 a.m. He had taken an overdose of antidepressants. At the hospital, medical personnel expected him to live. He didn’t.
…All told, Jason’s life was tortured. What a terrible sentence: to die, essentially, of perfectionism. It kept him from enjoying routine pleasures, from living free of guilt and compulsive thoughts, and from feeling valued.
It makes me appreciate more than ever what my late mother-in-law Sally Corteville used to tell her children and grandchildren: “Just try to be average.”
With all the pushing and exhortation in our society to be “exceptional,” just being average is a tremendous blessing for the vast majority of us.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Great column, Fitz! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks, Julius.
Though I understand the spirit of your MIL’s comment, unfortunately
I think that word tends to connote a somewhat negative meaning; e.g., look at the synonyms. I wish there was another word to convey that essence … suggestions, wordsmiths?
I think it’s all in the context, Gayle.
I agree to disagree.
(Way to shut down a conversation.)
Not much was stirring anyway…Better write about the pope.
I would be surprised if you didn’t.
I know what you mean, Gayle, but I can’t think of the right word. I think we’re talking about having a balanced life.
Thank you. And, I would agree with that!
Commenters rule…”There’s nothing wrong with being well balanced.”
…But only because my mother-in-law isn’t around to rap my knuckles.
Sounds like she’d make a good circulation manager.
Depression is not based in a rational evaluation of one’s life, it is clearly a problem based in some biological imbalance. I say this after we lost John Uhlmann. John was the perfect gentleman with a loving family, he had money, friends, political power and was a deeply spiritual man who acted out his Jewish faith on a daily basis. I remember walking around DC with him on one occasion and it took us forever to get where we were going because John had to stop and pay each homeless person he saw to give him directions.
There was no rational reason why he would have taken his life. I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t have embraced even a portion of what he had to live for and celebrated their many blessings and still he committed suicide. Depression is a vicious desiease. It is no more rational than cancer, or heart disease and perhaps it’s even more evil owing to the fact that most of us are not even willing to try and understand it.