What Comes After

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In the weeks following his brother Jason’s death, Daniel Kinnear told people what people in his position sometimes do: It was an accident.

It wasn’t. Kinnear didn’t have the language for that at the time, of course: to tell people his brother died by suicide. He was grieving. He was in shock. He was teaching five classes at the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management, with volunteer and advisory work on the side. “There’s not really a playbook for what to do when that happens,” he says. “Right?” Privately, he was shattered. Publicly, life went on. 

His office mate, David Zynda, remembers the moment. He was at a faculty meeting. Their department head got up and announced that Kinnear had lost his brother in a car accident the night before. “I took it as a car accident,” Zynda says. “But I’m always suspicious with these things, especially when you have someone so young. So I simply left a note.” 

In the note, Zynda told Kinnear he’d lost his own brother in 2020 — in his case, to suicide. He knew what that loss felt like. “The dagger in your heart,” he says. Sitting in his office in Eller, he unzips a black pouch containing a Bible and some mementos and slides a photograph of a boy in a suit and bowtie across his desk: Jaxon Thomas Kramer Zynda. Not technically Zynda’s brother, Zynda points out, but a nephew 10 years younger who Zynda helped raise from birth, who grew up alongside him, who shared Zynda’s home. “One of the most special people in my childhood,” he says. He was 16. 

So Zynda left a note. “That was my low-key way of telling him,” he says. “You know, if he did have that experience, that I did, too.” 

This was October 2023. Kinnear left for winter break and came back to the second half of a two-semester class. One student stood out. “He was great in the fall,” Kinnear says. Top of the class. No. 1 contributor. But something had shifted. He’d lose momentum during presentations. Stumble over words. “He just kinda faded to the middle of the pack,” Kinnear says. 

Cautiously, Kinnear took him aside and asked: What’s going on? The student shared that his sister had attempted suicide over winter break. 

Kinnear was at a loss: That made two people in his immediate orbit suffering in the same — or at least similar — way he was. Suicide had barely crossed his mind before. Now he was running into it everywhere. “He was the first student I told,” Kinnear says. 

Part of Kinnear’s journey entailed dismantling his own prejudice about who might be susceptible to suicide in the first place. Drug addicts, outcasts, people with acute mental illness, he thought — at least not people like his brother. “He was completely sober,” Kinnear says. “Physically fit. In the gym every day. Great job. Making a bunch of money. He had a girlfriend who really loved him, wanted to marry him.” 

A phrase that comes up in suicide prevention circles is that suicide doesn’t discriminate. It certainly didn’t for Kinnear. “I was ignorant,” he says. “I had a stereotype. And it blinded me.” 

He noticed that one of his clients had given money to the suicide prevention program at the U of A’s Counseling and Psych Services (CAPS), so he reached out. “They informed me that, in summer of 2024, the grant [funding the program] was ending,” he said. Hotlines; peer support groups; training for faculty, staff and students in initiating the kinds of conversations Kinnear was beginning to realize might’ve saved the life of someone like his brother — “There was just going to be a website,” he says. He decided to fund the program for the 2024-25 academic year himself. 

A PHRASE THAT COMES UP IN SUICIDE PREVENTION CIRCLES IS THAT SUICIDE DOESN’T DISCRIMINATE. IT CERTAINLY DIDN’T FOR KINNEAR. ‘I WAS IGNORANT,’ HE SAYS. ‘I HAD A STEREOTYPE. AND IT BLINDED ME.’

“What we know is that one of the easiest ways to prevent suicide is to talk about it,” says Aaron Barnes. Barnes is a clinical psychologist and director of CAPS and the person, alongside CAPS Associate Director Cassandra Hirdes, helping shape how we as a campus can best approach what can feel like an unapproachable subject. 

Let’s say you’re 18. Away from home for the first time. Who’s that stranger living on the other side of the room? Did someone put meals on the table for you at home? That’s something to figure out. Don’t forget to make friends. These are the best-slash-most-important years of your life. Yeah, COVID was hard on everyone. Did you pick a major yet? Is this what they mean by “dry heat”? Who actually are you? 

The stress is real and seemingly limitless. Some call their parents. Others are starting to realize that their parents — and the culture and expectations those parents represent — are part of what’s making them feel so alienated in the first place. 

“A lot of our work is actually educating families,” Barnes says. “Whether or not you ‘believe’ in mental health, I can talk about desired outcomes. ‘Here: Your child is coming to us saying XYZ. They’re at risk for suicide. What would you like to happen?’” CAPS won’t reach out to parents until they have permission from students, but when they do, Barnes says the answer is always the same: “We want our child to be safe.”

On one level, Barnes and Hirdes are providing support. On another, they’re trying to force a cultural shift. “I think oftentimes, societally, we think, ‘mental health belongs over here,’” Hirdes says, framing an invisible box in the air to her right before framing a second one to her left. “And physical health belongs over here.” 

But take a subject like suicide and you see how those boxes are inextricably linked, or maybe even the same box. The second-highest cause of death among American college students: Is that a question of physical health, or mental? 

The analytically minded might wonder how the efficacy of a suicide-prevention program can be measured in the first place: After all, you can’t say you’re succeeding just because people continue to live. Barnes points out that students who access CAPS services often cite it as the reason they stayed in school instead of dropping out. They’re able to contextualize their issues, take them in stride. “It’s not that no one’s going to die from suicide,” Barnes says. “It’s that folks that seek help are going to get the help they ask for.” 

Of course, it’s the students who don’t ask for help that Barnes and Hirdes worry about most. “The folks that don’t have any point of contact, connection, family supports,” Barnes says. The CAPS building is located off the Highland Bowl on the south side of the campus mall: a shady, green, welcoming spot. Still, as Barnes points out, it’s a health care facility, and the formality of the intake process — especially to students who might not have had a lot of exposure navigating health care growing up — can be intimidating, especially if you’re having a conversation about mental health. 

“A lot of our focus over the past few years has been increasing access points,” Barnes says, including providing free counselors at cultural resource centers where students — especially LGBTQ students and students of color — might feel more comfortable. The peer-to-peer piece has been particularly effective on that front: the simple, profound effect of how being around people with similar backgrounds or experiences can open you up. “It’s a very low-level intervention,” Barnes says. “But the more students we have out there having those conversations, the less suicide we’re going to see. At least, that’s the working theory.” 

At the more acute end of CAPS’ efforts is the co-responder program, which pairs mental health workers with University of Arizona Police Department officers to respond to crisis calls coming through both the emergency and non-emergency lines at UAPD. “It was in response to the safety requests of the campus,” Cassandra Hirdes says. “To have more mental health support intertwined with crisis response so that it’s not just coming from law enforcement.” 

‘I THINK IF THERE WAS LESS OF A STIGMA, MAYBE MY BROTHER OR OTHERS WOULD BE MORE COMFORTABLE SAYING, “I’VE HAD THESE THOUGHTS. I NEED HELP.”

Meet Patti Norris ’89: bright, warm and endlessly energetic; licensed clinician and crisis network manager who oversees both the University of Arizona Crisis Mobile Team (UACMT) and the CAPS liaison to the Dean of Students Office. Norris has a golf cart named Lucy that she drives back and forth across campus, introducing herself, gathering knowledge and understanding of the university system, seeing gaps in communication and strategizing about how those gaps can be closed. “The listening tour,” she calls it.

From Norris’ perspective, the goal is getting students the help they need when they need it. “In the past, those students who experienced a mental health crisis would go from dean of students to a student assistance coordinator,” she says. “They would make an appointment at CAPS, then CAPS would have to contact the student, and finally [the student] would see a clinician.” This could take anywhere from four days to three weeks. People in crisis don’t have three weeks; that’s not what crisis means. 

In listening, Norris hoped to streamline the bureaucracy that weighed the process down. Now, she says, she can often get to students the same day. 

She has a trusting relationship with UAPD, she says — a necessity. But she’s also aware of the harm police have caused certain communities, and why students might perceive the presence of law enforcement as a threat. Freddie Gray, George Floyd, Tyre Nichols — the stories keep coming. “We need to be thoughtful, because I don’t want to cause more harm or fear,” Norris says. “Because if I cause more harm or fear, I’m not going to be able to enter those spaces where there’s a crisis.” 

Part of what Norris has done is outlined protocol whereby she can enter crisis situations with UAPD officers when there’s a safety concern but go alone when there isn’t. The effect is twofold. One, a student in crisis doesn’t see a law enforcement officer and immediately think they’re being punished — a dynamic that can loosen the stigma around mental health in general. Two, an officer working in tandem with a clinician like Norris helps shift the perception of law enforcement and repair trust with communities they may have historically harmed. 

There’s also the simple fact that this isn’t the job UAPD showed up to do. “When you talk to Chief [Chris Olson], to our Mental Health Support Team officer John [Guetersloh], they don’t want to be mental health providers,” Norris says. “They don’t want to respond to students who are suicidal. They’re grateful.” 

These are not hypothetical situations. Norris has stories of students facing expulsion for violating the Student Code of Conduct when what they really needed — in her clinical opinion — was mental health support. Students who evened out and found their footing. Students who stayed. One point Norris makes over and over again is that a crisis is just a moment in time. It will not define you unless you let it. I’m Patti, she tells people. I’m here to help. 

One challenge of addressing the risk of suicide on an institutional level is that it dovetails with other issues that fall under other jurisdictions. Jessie Semmann, who directs the campus Threat Assessment and Management Team (TAMT), points out that people who are thinking about suicide usually aren’t thinking about harming others, for example, but people who are thinking about harming others — which would typically be the province of TAMT — are often willing to harm themselves, which wouldn’t. (Additionally, Semmann says, “We know folks who are struggling with mental health issues are more likely to be the victims of violent crime than they are to be the perpetrators of [it].”)

Say your roommate is having a hard semester but also starts posting images of firearms on social media. Say the fallout from a bad breakup turns into an obsession with an ex-partner. Semmann stresses that TAMT will take any call that comes to them, but that the overlap between issues adds complexity to situations that are plenty complex already. She also stresses that she feels a positive shift. “I can imagine if you attended the university 10, 20 years ago, we weren’t having some of these conversations. We weren’t as focused on some of these things — at least not openly.” 

“Sometimes I feel like we have so many avenues we’re trying to come at this from,” Cassandra Hirdes says — a natural response to a problem so deep and multifaceted. The operative goal at CAPS seems to be to proliferate: to turn students and peer leaders into the trained and trainers, to supplement law enforcement with the softer touch of counseling, and in general to spread the quilt of support as far and wide over campus as possible. “Something we’ve really been working on is sustainability,” Aaron Barnes says. “Because if it’s just me and the CAPS team, that’s not realistic.” 

Part of Daniel Kinnear’s gift is going toward funding something called QPR training: question, persuade, refer. Presenters at a recent training session described it as a mental health analog to CPR: not professional medical care, but an intervention that an ordinary person can make and still save a life. 

Some of the training is intuitive, some is more subtle. Asking a question that can be dismissed with a one-word answer, for example (“You don’t ever think about hurting yourself, do you?”) can easily shut a conversation down. Or realizing that something as seemingly irrelevant to mental health as someone’s boss taking a new job could be as major a loss as the dissolution of a relationship. Even something as seemingly obvious as empathy can be hard to practice, especially for those who rush to bright sides and silver linings: Sometimes, the training reminds you, a person just needs to be heard where they are. 

Kinnear was blindsided by his brother’s death but also has started to see some of their conversations in a new light. “He talked a lot about feeling trapped in his job,” Kinnear says, “or about things being ‘pointless’” — asides that might’ve just been a hard worker blowing off steam but also might’ve been invitations to a conversation he didn’t know how to have head-on. “After I learned about the trainings [CAPS] does, I could see that though the signs were very faint, there were signs.” 

Kinnear takes responsibility for his ignorance but also sees it as the byproduct of a broader societal failure. “I didn’t struggle with anger at [Jason],” he says. “I didn’t struggle with regret, because I didn’t really know what to do. But I do kind of resent that no one really talked to me about this. It’s not open in our culture. You know, we give trainings to high-school students about drinking and driving. But this is something that’s not talked about at all.” 

This is part of what makes Kinnear’s candor so radical and remarkable: He knows he was prejudiced about mental health and knows the passive damage that prejudice caused. The politics and generational divisions of the conversation don’t help: the hopeless sensitivities of “liberals,” for example, or the intolerance and repression of “conservatives.” Younger people pointing out how hard times are — how fraught, how violent, how economically dim — and older people countering that young people have no idea how easy they have it. All with the same net effect of pushing people into corners where their isolation takes over. “I think if there was less of a stigma, maybe my brother or others would be more comfortable saying, ‘I’ve had these thoughts,’” Kinnear says. Saying, “‘I need help.’”

There’s always the question of what narrative value facts and figures have in a conversation like this. Are they vital or opportunistic? Do they help make the urgency of the issue more concrete or do they vaporize it into a set of numbers — or worse, reduce an issue of life and death to a soundbite? 

‘WHAT WE KNOW IS THAT ONE OF THE EASIEST WAYS TO PREVENT SUICIDE IS TO TALK ABOUT IT.’

Would charts demonstrating rising suicide rates in the United States across all lines of age, gender and ethnic background, for example, persuade those unconvinced that this is a major issue in American society? What about noting that, in 2023, about twice as many Americans died by suicide than by homicide, or that 10,000 more Americans died by suicide that year than in car accidents? 

Would figures demonstrating disproportionate rates of suicide in Native Americans open a conversation about the effects of economic and cultural marginalization on mental health? Would noting, as is the case year after year, that men die by suicide at vastly higher rates than women force a conversation about what lessons we teach our sons about how to survive life itself? 

One slide in the QPR training suggests that every suicide touches 135 people: family, friends, co-workers and so on. It’s a little bit like throwing a rock into a pond, the trainers say. Kinnear is one person. His colleague, David Zynda, is another. Kinnear’s student is a third.  Each one is near the epicenter of their own tragedy, their own loss. But they’re also points on each other’s personal maps, a little further out from the center. In the end, the analogy goes, the ripples of suicide touch us all. Zynda remembers going to his church in search of help after his brother Jaxon’s suicide at the beginning of COVID lockdowns in 2020 and realizing he was going to have to suffer alone. “It was locked,” he says. “I couldn’t even go inside. I just fell on the ground.” 

“It’s a difficult issue for all of us,” says the actor Greg Kinnear ’86, who is Daniel’s uncle. He’s had his own brushes with suicide over the years — a makeup artist he knew early in his career, for example — but Jason’s death is the first time it touched his family directly. 

The subject is easier to broach than it used to be, he says. But the stigma is still there, and the resources are still thin. “You don’t know how you’re going to process something until it’s right in front of you,” he says. But he’s watching Daniel; following his lead, even. “[He’s] taking a foot forward in all this tragedy and saying, ‘How do we make this better? How do we help others that might be in this situation; how do we find a more local way to lend a hand?’” 

A word that comes up in QPR training is “hope.” How essential it is. How long a little bit of it can go. Daniel Kinnear remembers a student coming in shortly after Jason’s death and telling Kinnear how much she loved his class, “how much she respected and admired that I was continuing to teach it.” Innocent praise, made in passing. But it stuck with him, maybe even shifted his trajectory. “When someone’s in a crisis, a very small amount of encouragement can have a huge impact,” he says.

He’s still making his way. Teaching. Working. Keeping busy. Not a lot of time for hobbies. It’s only been a year. David Zynda, the colleague who left Kinnear that note when Kinnear was still calling his brother’s suicide an accident, is teaching, too. Daniel, Jason; David, Jaxon: the lives that go on go on altered. Kinnear is funding this year’s program because his life was changed by suicide. He also sees how the resources and training at CAPS might’ve helped him had he found them in time. When this year’s over, who knows. Early on, he says, he asked himself a question that set him on his path: “‘What would you do if you weren’t afraid?’” he says. “And my answer was, ‘I’d tell other people about this.’” 

If you or anyone you know is struggling with thoughts about suicide, please consider contacting a mental health professional or a helpline dedicated to suicide prevention. Resources such as the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and the Crisis Text Line (text HOME to 741741) offer confidential support 24/7. CAPS is also available to University of Arizona students as a walk-in resource during business hours or 24/7 by calling (520) 621-3334 and dialing ‘1’ to speak with a counselor. 

If you are experiencing a mental health emergency, call 911. You are not alone; there are people who care and want to help.

For more information on Campus Health’s Prevent Suicide Initiative and more resources on suicide and suicidality, visit preventsuicide.arizona.edu. 

For information about becoming a student supporter, visit caps.arizona.edu/student-supporter; for information about CAPS crisis support, visit caps.arizona.edu/crisis.