Gabay Brings Mental Health Focus to TDHS
By Xavier Orion Olaez
In recent days Susan Gabay has made a $200,000 donation in an effort to put a mental health center at the Dalles High School. She wants there to be a safe place to go that helps kids and families with mental illness.
We got the opportunity to interview Ms. Gabay recently. We asked if she could share what motivated her to make the generous donation.
She said there were two major influences.
Her first influence came from four years of working with the State of Oregon and low-income families served by Medicaid. Gabay, said that a lot of the time, families had trouble getting care or being able to take their children to a therapist. These troubles were also compounded by parents concerns about pulling their child out of school, for a whole day. Which can be tough for a kid, especially if they miss a review before a big test.
Susan’s Daughter Susanna Gabay in 2009
Her second major influence was her daughter Susanna Gabay. Her daughter came home one day and had heard about the difference between mood swings and depression. She then began a five-year struggle with mental health. She had a therapist and she had insurance so she wasn’t at a disadvantage.
Yet in 2010 at the age of 21, as a junior in college, she committed suicide.
Susan and her husband, Jerry, had already separated before their only child’s death. But they both did their best to be involved with things mental health related. He worked to change legislation through the National Alliance on Mental Illness. While Susan worked in the Gorge doing what she could on suicide prevention. Susan mentioned May is Mental Health Awareness Month.
Susan Gabay wants to show the community how to get help and what help looks like. When her daughter was diagnosed with depression, she didn’t know what to do. She just went through the system.
She said she now believes that if there had been ease of accessibility to mental health resources in schools that maybe their daughter could have gotten help earlier. Gabay said communication between those hurting and the people who know them best was key to helping those in crisis. Friends, family, teachers, and councilors can all assist in helping someone in crisis.
Both of Susanna Gabay’s parents wanted to make a sizable difference and provide mental health resources. Unfortunately, Susanna's father died a year ago in March. Their plan was always to make contributions to provide more mental health services and now, Susan has carried that plan out.
We asked Susan to tell us about her daughter.
She said Susanna Gabay was a valedictorian at Hood River Valley High School. She was fluent in Spanish and she traveled to many countries when she was younger with family and on her own. She also studied abroad. She went to Mexico and stayed there for 5 months and made a lot of friends. She was a peace activist in 2004 when the US went to war against Iraq.
“She was a brilliant girl who was also sensitive,” said Gabay, who also said that she felt it was important for people to know that Susanna took medicine for her depression and that mental illness is not something to hide from. It's a real medical illness. The risk of not being treated or not talking about it is too high.
In 2015, a bill called the Susanna Blake Gabay Bill was passed by Gov. Kate Brown in Oregon To summarize it, safety trumps privacy when it comes to mental health. To read the full bill click here.
Susan Gabay’s message is that she thinks there needs to be more communication available for kids. We need to be able to have an open conversation and make sure it is safe to talk about mental health. That’s why she donated $200,000 to help build a mental health center at The Dalles High School.
Link to original story about donation here.
