Cheryl Hanna and Paul Henninge Credit: Paul Henninge

In public, Cheryl Hanna was bright, poised and confident. On WCAX and other broadcast media, the Vermont Law School professor adeptly translated dense legal decisions. On campus, she was a beloved figure many regarded as an inspiring role model.

But none of that immunized her from slipping into a severe depression in May. It was, according to her husband, Paul Henninge, a “very fast, very spiraling” downward slope. “When she entered this most recent bout of depression — which in my 12 years, I’d never seen anything like this with her — I kept asking her to be patient,” he remembered Monday.

Hanna sought help — through her general practitioner and a therapist. In late July, she agreed to be admitted to Fletcher Allen Health Care, her husband said.

But she found herself “stuck” in the emergency room for a few days because there was no room in Shepardson, the building that holds the hospital’s psychiatric floors, Henninge said. Such waits have been common in Vermont due to a lack of psychiatric facilities, acknowledged Fletcher Allen spokesman Mike Noble. On any given day last month, he said, three to 15 people statewide were waiting for beds.

Hanna headed home for her 48th birthday — July 22 — then returned to Fletcher Allen when a spot finally opened in Shepardson. “She did not like being there,” Henninge said. “She was worried about the stigma associated with that and how it may have an effect on her career.” She wanted to go home, and staff decided to release her on Friday, July 25, for the weekend.

The next day, Saturday, Hanna left the house for a while, ostensibly to attend a yoga class. In fact, Henninge learned later from police investigators, she went to a local firearms shop and purchased a handgun.

On Sunday, Henninge was among the volunteers setting up for the annual Summer Greek Food Festival — an event Hanna had always enjoyed. He stopped home to check on his wife. That morning, he’d urged her to come to the festival; she had told him she didn’t want to get out of bed. Her sister, who had come in from Chicago to help, had gone for a “quick shop.”

When Henninge didn’t find his wife, he and his sister-in-law began searching. Ultimately, she found Hanna in the basement, wounded, as a result of a self-inflicted gunshot. That was the official cause of death.

Hanna and Henninge had two children together.

News of Hanna’s death generated an outpouring of grief — and public accolades from friends, elected officials, and students and staff at the law school. Many recalled her generous nature and her interest in women’s legal issues. Mourners packed the University of Vermont’s Ira Allen Chapel for Hanna’s Greek Orthodox funeral last Friday.

On a legacy webpage set up by VLS, colleagues and students described her as a personable, approachable and beloved professor, and commented on Hanna’s dedication to women’s issues and her command of the law.

“A week before my midterm exams, during my second semester of my 1L year, my computer crashed,” wrote Hermise Pierre. “Prof. Hanna offered to let me borrow her extra laptop. Not only did I use it for my midterms but for the remaining semester. Thank you for all that you have done for me and the students at VLS. We will miss your smile, sense of humor and outgoing personality.”

On Monday, Henninge, who works as an industrial designer, spoke to Seven Days in his downtown Burlington office about his wife’s life and death. “I think if there’s any lesson that needs to be considered it’s that the subject of depression needs to be kind of put more out in the light of day,” he said.

“I’ve been told by so many people — people you would never believe this to be true, and people who I come into daily interaction with — of parental suicides in their family,” he said. “I never heard of these things until now because of the taboo surrounding the issue, and that sense of shame that is associated with it.”

Hanna’s struggle is a common one in Vermont. The state’s suicide rate is higher than the national rate, health officials acknowledged in 2012 in a Youth Suicide Prevention Platform. Last year, 108 people in Vermont took their own lives.

“Somebody’s dying of suicide every four days. That’s pretty astounding,” said Mary Moulton, executive director of Washington County Mental Health Services.

She cautioned against drawing parallels between cases. Every individual, every story, is unique, she said. “Suicide reaches all socioeconomic groups, and the emotional pain does not exclude anyone.”

“This has a staggering impact on small communities in a rural state,” said JoEllen Tarallo-Falk, executive director of the Center for Health & Learning in Brattleboro, which coordinates suicide-prevention efforts in Vermont.

Men kill themselves more frequently than women by a four-to-one ratio, according to state statistics, and the most common method is using firearms. A national group recently reported that Vermont had more gun fatalities than vehicular deaths in 2011; most of the gun deaths were suicides.

Henninge said he had no guns in the house, and is not a “gun guy.”

“It’s kind of freaky how easy it was for her to get that gun,” he said of his wife’s weapons purchase.

Ann Braden, the leader of Gun Sense Vermont, said that gun shops do perform background checks in Vermont. However, she said, the state has submitted few people to the federal list of those who can be barred for purchasing a gun for psychiatric reasons, and they do not include people who have been voluntarily hospitalized — only those found or adjudicated to be a threat to themselves or others.

Alexander Potter, also from the Center for Health & Learning, has been researching a suicide-prevention idea that is already in place in New Hampshire. Some gun stores there voluntarily display posters promoting suicide-hotline numbers and distribute literature that describes where to get help. He said local mental-health officials are reviewing his proposal for possible adoption in Vermont.

Hanna’s death could start a number of conversations: about ready access to guns, about the stigma still attached to seeking help for a mental health problem, and about the ongoing lack of readily available psychiatric beds in Vermont.

“I’m happy to talk,” Henninge said in his office. “But I want to make sure it brings forward the awareness of the disease of depression … She got caught in this strange, dark place, where she couldn’t see, and where she was suffering so much.”

Need Help? Some Suicide Resources

The original print version of this article was headlined “Cheryl Hanna’s Suicide Confirms Mental Health Problems in Vermont”

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This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2014.

News editor Matthew Roy has been at Seven Days since 2014. Before that, he was an editor at The Virginian-Pilot.

30 replies on “Cheryl Hanna’s Suicide Confirms Mental Health Problems in Vermont”

  1. What profound irony exists in the fact that it takes extinguishing a bright, beautiful light like Hannah’s to illuminate the complex issue of depression – and to spark a public dialogue concerning what is so frequently a hidden – even secretive – and highly stigmatized topic. I mourn Hannah’s loss, but also the world’s loss. For Hannah was unquestionably a gift to our world, and that gift and the clear, courageous voice that accompanied it, are now gone and silenced.

    For some years I served on the HCRS Board, compelled to do so by family circumstances that even today I will not disclose outside the family – because quite frankly the intense human struggle to address the challenge of a mental illness is compounded beyond belief by the stigma, misunderstanding, and prejudices that can be encountered anywhere and everywhere in today’s society.

    I pray therefore that this tragedy – this unbelievable, profoundly sad end to a life so full of promise – will bring this issue out from its dark shadows into the light of Hannah’s brilliance.

    I did not know you Hannah, and yet I ken you. Rest with the angels my dear. Your struggle is over – but ours – if we accept the lesson of your too-short life – ours must now begin. Who will take up this torch?

  2. Paul,
    It is not just the stigma that keeps us from talking about a suicide. After 41 years, I still find it very painful to speak of my father’s death. I have also seen that many times people back away from these painful topics. They don’t want to be “touched” by it. It’s a relief to me to be given the chance to be more open in this public discussion.

    Seven Days:
    I suggest coverage of these topics:
    Please address the stigma of seeking help for mental health problems. This needs to be addressed over and over.
    Create awareness of the symptoms of depression so that people may recognize the condition in themselves and others.
    Suppose someone who is clearly depressed and suicidal approaches you. What if a family member of that person approaches you for help? How do you respond? What resources are available? What would happen if you took that person to the ER or called the Crisis Clinic?
    If a family you know has experienced a death from suicide, how can you help that family heal? What should you avoid?
    Keep up the good work,
    Jennifer Kochman

  3. There is a stigma about mental health issues, and talking about it is the only way to root it out of our culture– ignoring it surely won’t. At least it hasn’t so far in recorded history. And the stigma is part of the reason that treatment is hard to get even when you have financial access to it and are motivated to do it, as Hanna was initially. If we took mental illness as seriously and non-judgmentally as heart disease, would she have had to spend days in an ER?
    We do not know what happened after her admission to change her mind about getting hospital treatment, and it is absolutely true that an adult can’t be held in treatment against his or her will without evidence of imminent threat sufficient to get a court order– clearly not the case here. We can’t blame her release on the hospital, but I hope it is engaging in a review of her treatment while she was there– her brief stay raises the question, were resources available to give her what she needed, when she needed it, or was this another waiting game due to insufficient staffing or other resources, another measure of the social stigma, reflected in financial priorities?
    The question is not intended to blame this hospital, but to look at how our system could and should change.
    Likewise, the easy access to a gun. I question how effective a poster with a help line is going to be in the gun shop– I suspect many buyers, like Hanna, have already tried and failed to get help. For starters, this state needs to start reporting to the federal data bank. But since 40 percent of our gun sales aren’t subject to a background check at all, clearly we also need to close that loophole. And more, we need to look at other ways to make it harder for guns to end up in the wrong hands: a waiting period, a broader restriction on selling to those with any recent history of treatment for mental illness.

  5. Exactly. I wonder how many suicides could be prevented if the purchaser had to wait even just 24 hours.

  6. Harold A. Maio, you claim to be a “mental health editor”? (whatever that is) Well, I am certainly glad you are retired.

    The fact that Cheryl was worried about how depression would effect her career is EXACTLY what needs to be discussed!!! There IS a stigma that needs to be addressed and changed! How DARE you imply that her husband “held this prejudice in his mind”. and by “repeating it, will cause harm”. By “repeating it” he may bring about an honest discussion that may hopefully lead to change.

    You are a complete moron.

  8. Time out. The “staff *decided* to release her?” Or was she released AMA – Against Medical Advice?

    I mean, let’s all stipulate that, absent a court ruling, a patient cannot be treated or held against their will. This is the law.

    “She wanted to go home, and staff decided to release her on Friday, July 25, for the weekend.”

    What other “decision” was possible? If she wanted to go home, she could go home – as could any other patient anywhere in a community hospital. Period. Full stop. End of story. My point is that the story reads as though the staff at Fletcher-Allen said, “Yeah, absolutely, you’re good to go.” This is almost certainly complete nonsense.

    Hanna *elected* to remove herself from treatment, and the Fletcher-Allen staff had nothing to say about it.

  9. — “She was worried about the stigma associated with that and how it may have an effect on her career.”
    You chose that statement, clearly indicating you hold this prejudice in your mind. Remove it, each time you repeat it you harm.
    —“I never heard of these things until now because of the taboo surrounding the issue, and that sense of shame that is associated with it.”

    You chose this one, too. I regret you hold those prejudices.

    —about the stigma still attached to seeking help for a mental health problem

    You have made yourself perfectly clear.

    Harold A. Maio, retired mental health editor

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