Suicide expert faced it in her own life; she’ll share her story at Peninsula HS

With experience comes the ability to teach.

Diana Cortez-Yanez teaches others about suicide prevention.

Cortez-Yanez, a Tacoma native, will be speaking about suicide prevention at 6 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 25 at the Peninsula High School auditorium. This free event is sponsored by the Gig Harbor Key Peninsula Suicide Coalition.

Cortez-Yanez is a 54-year-old woman who has spoken about suicide for the last five years, including at the White House during the Obama administration.

“I suffered from depression and had to not work for many years. I had a really rough time,” Cortez-Yanez said.

After several suicide attempts, Cortz-Yanez was enrolled in 2010 in into a dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) program at Harbor View Hospital in Seattle. She says it changed her life.

“I was treated completely different than I’ve ever been treated before,” she said. “They directly talked about suicide and everything we did was helping me toward where I wanted to live.”

DBT provides clients with new skills to manage painful emotions and decrease conflicts in relationships, according to Psychology Today.

After going through the DBT program, Cortez-Yanez learned a very valuable lesson: One can have terrible experiences, but still have a life worth living.

“I’ve never heard that before. I thought if you have a lot of bad things in your life you can feel down always and that is where suicide came up for me,” Cortez-Yanez said. “But I found out that there are possibilities of having a better life — but the only way for a better life is to be alive.”

Today she is a faculty member of the Zero Suicide Institute, a program of the Educational Development Center of Waltham, MA.

This better life came from speaking outright about what she has gone through.

“At first I was nervous about talking about my past, especially the suicide attempts. But what I found was every time I told my story I healed myself more,” Cortez-Yanez said.

And speaking one’s own story is a message the Gig Harbor Key Peninsula Suicide Coalition can get behind.

“Part of what we are doing is get the word out about mental health and suicidal issues because we know that the more people who can learn to speak about their issues can deal with them,” said Bob Anderson, a member of the coalition.

This mindset has pushed the coalition to create a program titled “Talks Saves Lives,” teaching others how to share their story in an organic and healing way.

With financial support from Pierce County, the coalition was also able to bring in Leah Harris on Dec. 2. She will be presenting at Heron’s Key, training the public on how to share their personal stories and triumphant over any trauma they have faced in their lives.

The Gig Harbor Key Peninsula Suicide Coalition was able to put 20 suicide-prevention signs on Narrow Bridge at the beginning of 2019. These signs consist of encouraging messages such as “You’re not alone — make the call.” The suicide prevention phone number is also on every sign.

Anderson was happy to report that there was at least one instance where the signs prevented a suicide from occurring.

“He went to the bridge, parked his car and was going to jump. He saw the signs and decided to call and didn’t jump,” Anderson said. “That is at least one very real success story but there is no way you’ll know other stories who may have decided not to jump.”

Anderson said suicide is often times an impulsive act and the main goal with the signs is to just cause people to simply pause.

CORRECTION: The headline on an earlier version of this story named the wrong high school. The event is at Peninsula High School.

This story was originally published November 19, 2019 at 4:41 PM.