LOGAN — It’s taken a long time for public officials and the public at large to talk openly about mental health issues and previous taboo topics such as suicide.
On KVNU’s For the People program on Tuesday, local activist of sorts, Jaden Larsen said he has gone through mental health issues from the time he was a kid
‘In fact, we had just moved to a town where I knew one other person in the entire school. And then I start to experience some bullying from the other kids and was really angry at my parents for moving us out to this random place, I thought was the middle of nowhere. It’s Wellsville, it’s probably five minutes from my real home,” he explained.
Larsen said he felt completely alone while being there and depression and anxiety started to sink in.
“And so I had experienced depression those few years and then it got to the point where, I mean, it had been a few years that I was battling depression, going to therapy, going to different things to help it. Nothing seemed to be working, no drugs, no nothing.
The one day I remember exactly where I was, we were driving through the canyon. And I looked up in the hills and I started to have a whole plan in my head about how to end my life.”
He said he was even moved to tell his Mom. Larsen started to get better but has more recently started suffering from severe anxiety.
He said he had started working in the administrations of Representative Dan Johnson and also Cache County Executive David Zook and they were very supportive.
He said with that and family support it was very empowering to be able to talk about it.