Back from Suicide: Before and After the Essential Patrick (epub)

A mother supports her son’s gay life. She is in awe of his achievements. Patrick Wood is a valedictorian, an AP Scholar, and a National Merit Scholarship winner with perfect SAT scores. A year after graduating from Stanford with honors in 2005, he plugs every opening in a small room and lights charcoal. He is twenty-three years old. Rimer tracks her desperate need to understand his death through suicide research, memoirs, and media—anything to find answers. She traces Patrick’s depression through years of therapy, medication, and hospitalization at Stanford, none of which assuage his perfectionism and self-doubt. 

Back from Suicide reveals the suicidal mind through the misery of depression and the difficulty of coming out. It’s about the enigma of self-destruction after a lifetime of success. It is a mother’s pursuit of the biggest question of humankind—why do people kill themselves? Rimer learns what she should have done, what she should have said, what parents need to know, and, in spite of mistakes, how she emerged Back from Suicide.