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
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-TALK)
- Vermont Department of Health resource page
- Dial 211 (A statewide health and human services hotline)
The original print version of this article was headlined “Cheryl Hanna’s Suicide Confirms Mental Health Problems in Vermont”
![Suicide Prevention Awareness Month [SIV457]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/episode457.png?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2014.
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I have been depressed, dated someone with depression / threatened to end her life and had a family member attempt suicide.
There is no one depression.
Depression seems to me to be = “something is not right”.
Can be mental, physical circumstantial.
Speculation is moot.
My heart goes out to the family – sending you love and compassion….
I think it is extremely commendable that Ms. Hanna’s husband and family have been so open about this tragedy. There IS real stigma about depression and other mental health issues, and their willingness to share their experience can only help ease that stigma.
It sounds like Ms. Hanna was a “helper” in her life, and although it will never make up for their loss, I hope her family and friends will be able to see that their beloved wife, mother, sister, friend, etc. did not die completely in vain. I will hold them all close in my thoughts and prayers.
Thanks to Seven Days for this important (yet so very heartbreaking) story.
I am absolutely appalled at the comment made about suicide being a “selfish” act and that someone’s loved one should be “buried and forgotten”. How dare you? You obviously have never lost anyone to suicide. Maybe you should spend some time with a survivor, hearing their stories… there sure are enough of us out there, especially in Vermont. This type of comment is exactly why people who are suffering from mental illness and depression don’t step forward. They try to handle it themselves. People are scared of the repercussions of admitting that they have had suicidal thoughts and many of us are scared to think that someone we know might speak up… what do we do then? How do we help? But we have to Talk, Ask, Listen and Know… We need to demystify suicide, eliminate the stigmas of depression and mental illness and take that leap into the unknown by educating ourselves. It could save someone you love. My son took his own life 3 years ago at the age of 22. Was he depressed? Did he suffer from a mental illness? The answer is … I don’t know and I never will know! We shelter ourselves from these topics because “it can’t possibly happen to us”… I am hear to tell you, that it can. So please talk about it with everyone you know and learn as much as you can… Education is power. Speak out …
What irks me is how the media, particularly the Burlington Free Press, leaped into action to lionize this woman who offed herself and-almost certainly-traumatized her two grade-school children for life.
She’s been called “a great community leader” and a “shining light” and (probably, for all I know) “a magic unicorn, bathed in the very light of creation.” Feh. She killed herself and obviously didn’t give a second thought for how this will affect the lives of her minor children. She could have continued treatment at Fletcher-Allen, but decided to abandon this course of action, preferring the ultimate act of selfishness.
Bury her and forget her. As quickly as possible. And hope her children can do the same. But that won’t happen.
I don’t know why the conversation has to always turn simplistic and state that guns cause suicide? I can think of a dozen ways to do it, and personally using a gun to do it is repulsive to me. We just had a woman use sleeping pills and a plastic bag to suffocate herself.
Of course Cheryl was worried about how it would look and what effect it would have on her job. I lost a brother to suicide and I was fired from a job while out of work for depression. Yes, that;s right, I was out on “disability” when they fired me and guess what, the employer was a hospital. I’m so sorry that this bright, talented, beautiful woman took her own life. I know how the family suffers because of this and YES we must talk about depression and suicide. Not having adequate resources to address those who need help is a SHAME on our current administration who doesn’t value mental health issues.
Vermont has to do something about our lack of mental health resources. We should all be ashamed of our state when someone breaks thru the barriers and goes for help and ends up in an emergency room for days?? At their darkest hour this is the best we can do? This is how we take care of our own? The prisons are full of foks with mental health diagnosesj, with very little help there and having to be subjected to the cruelty of offenders and locked into segregation constantly so they can by “handled”. Community mental heal providers didn’t work.
We need to go back to where we started with a large buildingj, adequate staff and resouces to help these people, weather it’s for a week,, a month or a year. We do better in vermont finding homes and taking care of animals than we do our mentallhy ill.
There’s so much wrong with the various theories about “waiting periods” and “background checks” that I hardly know where to begin.
First, denying Constitutionally-guaranteed rights to a person with “recent history of treatment for mental illness.” What – *exactly* – does “recent history of treatment for mental illness” mean? Does it mean that someone who goes to a psychiatrist for help coping with job-related stress or anxiety is denied their 2nd Amendment rights? I mean, I don’t think even psychiatrists could possibly agree on what a “recent history of treatment for mental illness” actually is. Going to a psychologist for marriage counseling? Or to quit smoking?
Second, if someone knows that going anywhere near a psychiatrist is going to mean a lifelong ban (what does “recent” mean, *exactly*…) on a Constitutional right, are they going to go down that road? I certainly wouldn’t.
Thirdly, firearms are legitimate means of personal protection. Is a gunshop owner to tell a woman who’s covered with bruises, holding a Temporary Restraining Order against the boyfriend who lumped up on her, and in terror for her life, “OK, hope he doesn’t come for you with a baseball bat tonight, because you can’t have that 9mm until Thursday. Good luck!”
Unfortunately, the Hanna case is one of those intractable issues that just has no good solution. We can’t deny her her Constitutional rights – temporarily or permanently. And we can’t imprison her because some doctor imagines she’s a suicide risk. To put it bluntly, people have the right to kill themselves, and there’s really very little we can do about it.
Dan, the primary issue here is depression and treatment; however, the secondary issue is firearm accessibility. I am gun owner and a hunter, but I do think that a day or two may/can make a difference. Sometimes when life seems overwhelming at night, the next morning a ray of hope appears. I don’t know if it would have made a difference with Hanna, but it couldn’t have hurt.
It’s useless to puff and blow about “waiting periods” for gun purchases, or whine about “background checks,” but the simple facts are that someone blowing their brains out on Tuesday is just as tragic as the same outcome on Monday. Add this to the fact that Hanna would – unless she was a felon or an *adjudicated* mental patient – certainly have passed the background check, and we have nothing more than the usual formula for the typically leftist anti-gun “me-feel-good-I-done-something” rhetoric that will do absolutely nothing about anything.