Joseph took his own life. He committed suicide. Many of you who knew Joseph may not have known that he has been incarcerated for the past year related to criminal charges. On April 15th, 2002 Joseph was arrested and subsequently convicted of armed robbery. The recommended sentence was fifteen years in prison with the possibility of parole after four years. As part of the sentencing process, the court ordered a psychological evaluation to be completed and considered in final sentencing.
Throughout the legal proceedings our efforts as parents were directed at obtaining the evaluation and treatment necessary for us to understand and deal with the underlying problems that put Joe in the position to commit the crime in the first place. Joe was suffering from mental illness. It was and is hard to acknowledge, even now, that our son was mentally ill. Such is the stigma our society places on this type of problem.
Joseph was receiving medical and psychological care, leading to a diagnosis, shortly before his death, of major depression. A depression that was so severe that apparently Joe saw no way out of the situation in which he found himself. Suicide was Joe's way out.
We will always wonder what we could have done but didn't. What we should have done but didn't. But those matters are no longer for us to grapple with. For his family, what matters most now is that Joe's death is not merely a momentary disruption in our lives. Rather, we are determined to find ways in which this tragedy might lead to constructive ways to deal with the factors that contributed to Joe's death.
