This article discusses suicide, which may be distressing to some readers. If you or anyone you know is struggling with their mental health, resources are available to help nationally — call 988 to speak with the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline — and locally here.
Ilana Sheppard and Lydia Nichols know all too well the cost of America’s mental health crisis.
Sheppard’s 17-year-old son, Marius Maximus Hathaway, died by suicide Nov. 19, 2020, after being denied long-awaited mental health treatment because he didn’t have the identification he needed with him. And Nichols had to move from Seattle to Fayetteville three years ago after her son’s father, a veteran, also died by suicide.
Now, the two Cumberland County women are on the front lines of the local battle against stigmas surrounding mental health care in the United States in an attempt to shield other families from the kind of grief they’ve experienced. Through Sheppard’s nonprofit, the Marius Maximus Foundation for Mental Health, and Nichols’ care coordination organization, Integrated Wellness, they’re collaborating to address the gaps that may prevent Cumberland County residents from accessing mental health care and other crucial resources.
“People shouldn’t have to wait months in order to be able to talk to somebody,” Sheppard told CityView.
Sheppard established the Marius Maximus Foundation on Nov. 19, 2021 — the first anniversary of her son’s death — and immediately dove headfirst into helping bring awareness and provide resources however and wherever she could. She obtained her peer support specialist certification, a program offered by UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Social Work, in February 2023. Soon after, Sheppard created two peer support groups for people struggling with mental health and substance abuse in Cumberland County.
She established a hub last year at Fayetteville’s Day Resource Center, where she works to connect homeless people with resources they may need. Sheppard and Nichols partnered with two other organizations, Better Beginnings and Cape Fear Valley Health’s community paramedics program, to create YouthTHRIVE, an initiative aimed at preventing suicide and bettering mental health in young people. The women are also working with Cumberland County Schools to bring “calm corners” to Seventy-First High School — painted, welcoming spaces where students can step away to do a well-being check-in with themselves in difficult moments during the school day.
And those efforts are being recognized. Last month, the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners voted to provide the Marius Maximus Foundation with $30,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funding. According to an April 1 memorandum from Cumberland County Chief of Staff Tye Vaught, the foundation plans to use the money to fund its peer support specialists and provide additional training and self-care bags for program participants.
A life cut short
Marius was a witty teenager who loved his family and his dog, Bailey, fiercely, his mother said. A whiz with computers and math, he enjoyed playing computer games like “League of Legends” in his free time, and most of his friends were people he’d met online. He’d been diagnosed with ADHD and ODD (oppositional defiant disorder) as a child, but after Sheppard worked with her son’s school to create an individualized educational plan for him, he thrived for years, she said.
By the time Marius was a junior in high school, he didn’t even need that plan, according to his mother. Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, and all sense of normalcy disappeared. The switch to online classes was difficult for Marius, especially as he entered his senior year at Cape Fear High School, his mother said.
“There was a lot of him not feeling like he belonged, feeling different than others,” she said. “Then, adding in Covid and not being able to be around friends and talk to people the same age as him that would understand where he’s coming from — I think that was really hard for him.”
Once a stellar student, Marius’ grades slipped. Sheppard grew concerned about her son’s isolation. The boy who loved to hike with her at Raven Rock State Park and who would turn to his beloved dog for comfort in moments of panic was struggling. She contemplated getting Marius tested for autism, knowing he had difficulty with social interactions and low self-esteem. He always told his parents he didn’t know what he wanted to do after high school because he “wasn’t good at anything,” Sheppard said.
After being referred by his primary care provider for treatment, Marius finally got in with a therapist in the fall of 2020. On the day of his appointment, Sheppard had to work and couldn’t go with him.
Marius was turned away because he didn’t have a photo ID with him, his mother said. When Sheppard called to reschedule, the practice told her they didn’t have any available appointments for months, she said.
Two weeks later, Marius was dead.
Call to action
In 2021, the most recent year with available data, Cumberland County lost 58 people to suicide, according to the N.C. Dept. of Health and Human Services. State data shows that “suicide is the second leading cause of death for youth ages 10-18, and the third leading cause of death for” people ages 19-34 in North Carolina. Suicide rates have continued to rise nationally and statewide over the last decade, the North Carolina Institute of Medicine reported.
According to the CDC, the lives lost to suicide in North Carolina in 2021 represented 29,988 years of potential life lost before age 65; the state lost more than $15 billion in medical costs, lost work and lost quality of life.
Sheppard may be intimately familiar with those numbers now, but she didn’t have a background in mental health before starting the foundation. She was a registered veterinary technician, but losing Marius rocked her world, ultimately inspiring her to provide the help to others that could have saved her son.
“This kind of sparked a year’s worth of research on the numbers and data that pertain to suicide and mental health and substance abuse, and brought me to create [the Maximus Marius] foundation,” she said. “I decided that mental health care shouldn’t be so hard to obtain.”
She relied on networking to find people who could teach her about mental health and running a nonprofit, she said. The Greater Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce was especially helpful, according to Sheppard, enabling her to connect with business owners who were happy to assist.
Lydia Nichols had been a registered pediatric nurse for two decades before coming to Fayetteville and joining the fight with Sheppard. Nichols’ son’s father died by his own hand feet away from him, and she knew she needed to support him and other children struggling with their mental health, she said.
“I decided to get into the work because I’ve seen the downhill slope that my son was going down,” Nichols told CityView. “I was connected with another community member and they were like, ‘You need to get with Ilana,’ because I’m a pediatric registered nurse. I was doing work with the youth.”
Within a week of meeting Sheppard, Nichols said, the two women decided to find a way to combine their expertise. That work led to a yearlong grant from UNC’s Suicide Prevention Institute awarded in August 2023, which helped them jump-start their work with YouthTHRIVE on youth suicide prevention, Nichols said. The Suicide Prevention Institute was created in July 2022 to research suicide in North Carolina, nationally, and internationally, according to its website.
Sheppard said the grant enabled them to provide important classes, including QPR, or “question, persuade, refer,” training. Created in 1995 by clinical psychologist Paul Quinnett, QPR training is described as the “CPR for a mental health crisis,” teaching trainees how to hold conversations and de-escalate situations in which a person is experiencing a mental health crisis, according to the institute’s website.
“We’ve done some of this education at [Fayetteville Technical Community College], and we’re actually in talks with FTCC on how we could potentially work together to get their students trained in QPR,” Sheppard said.
According to Sheppard and Nichols, other efforts in the works include:
“There’s a lot of moving pieces to this plan, and I think that we are making some serious progress within the things that we are wanting,” Sheppard said.
And the work never stops; Sheppard said she’s now working on a certificate in substance abuse and alcohol counseling.
“There’s a lot of things that kind of pushes me towards this,” she said. “And, really, the ultimate thing is saving lives, preventing somebody from taking their life because of the disparities that there might be.”
Breaking barriers
Though mental health is more openly discussed than it once was, many barriers still prevent equal access to mental health care, including in Cumberland County, according to Sheppard and Nichols.
Nichols said that, as a Black woman, she found there are strong taboos around talking about mental health in the Black community.
“I can’t say it any other way; that was a white people’s thing, because we come from slavery, so we’re not going to take our own lives,” she said. “We’ve gone through enough, so that’s not something we think about.”
Even a year after the death of her son's father, “just saying the word [suicide] took a lot.”
Tackling that stigma is the first obstacle to overcome in order to enable better mental health care for all, Nichols said.
“We have to attack that before we can even get you the help,” she said.
Nichols said she and Sheppard specifically asked the school system to help in “the poorest and the Blackest school in Cumberland County.” They felt cultural stigmas around discussing mental health in the Black community would lead to those schools getting less resources, she said.
Another community the women believe is at higher risk in Cumberland County is the LGBTQ+ community. A survey by The Trevor Project, a nonprofit suicide prevention organization aimed at the LGBTQ+ community, found that 12% of LGBTQ youth nationally attempted suicide in the past year and 39% seriously considered suicide.
“Our community [Cumberland County] is a little bit old-school and not as openly accepting,” she said. “I think that places a lot of pressure on individuals who are from that community, and it stifles that sense of self of who we are because it’s so frowned upon.
“Wherever that stigma is coming from, it is making these young individuals who are literally in the middle of discovering who they are and where they’re going to go and who they’re going to be — it makes them feel insignificant,” Sheppard continued. “When you lose hope, that’s when things like suicidal ideation become more prevalent.”
Regardless of identity, mental health simply needs to be discussed more, she noted.
“I think that is really a stigma that needs to be broken in general,” she said.
Continuing the fight
Nichols said she believes two components are critical in mental health advocacy: having somebody on the ground doing the work, and having somebody to share the information on a larger scale. That’s where partnerships with organizations like UNC’s Suicide Prevention Institute come in, she said.
Sheppard said hearing from those with lived experience with mental health struggles and training in best practices is important.
“I have seen individuals in a peer support role change the lives of others with the stories that they tell,” she said. “We’ve been through the systems; we know how that goes. [We’ve] been that mother, that single mother with kids and trying to figure out where we’re going to find food to feed them, and then working those resources.”
No matter the level of training one has, Sheppard said she wishes people would understand that there are many factors that play into suicidal ideation.
“People need to understand that it’s not just having a bad mental health day,” she said.
Don’t underestimate the importance of letting someone know they matter, Sheppard said.
“We want you to be here. We want you to live because you’re important,” she said. “No matter where you’re from, no matter who you are, your life matters.”
Reporter Lexi Solomon can be reached at lsolomon@cityviewnc.com or 910-423-6500.
This story was made possible by contributions to CityView News Fund, a 501c3 charitable organization committed to an informed democracy.
