You can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro discussed his upcoming Above Ground show in Los Angeles set to take place on April 16th in Los Angeles in a new Yahoo interview. The concert is to raise awareness for mental health issues with MusiCares.
“We have lost a lot of friends this year, due to mental health issues,” Navarro said, referring to Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington, who died of suicide last year. “I don’t have any insight as to what their mental health issues were or weren’t, so I don’t want to lump them in that category. … I’m not a doctor. I can’t sit here and say what they did and didn’t have, and what caused them to do what they did. But I would say that going to Chris Cornell’s funeral and seeing Chester Bennington sing a beautiful song for his friend, and then [Chester] taking his life a month later, really had a massive impact on me. … I couldn’t help but be brought back to the times when I had felt that lonely, that desperate, that suicidal, and I just want to change the playing field [with ‘Above Ground’] and let people know that there are options out there. [Suicide] isn’t the final answer. It’s okay to reach out for help.”
Navarro went on to discuss the widely known fact that childhood trauma affects development and is a strong predictor of depression and suicide.
“In some cases [of rock star suicides], drug addiction was a massive factor, but you’ve got to look at the underlying thing. And usually, drug addiction comes from some early trauma,” Navarro explained. “That is something that lends itself to a mental health issue. I mean, trauma sufferers tend to reach for drugs. I can tell you for sure, suffering a massive trauma as a child, drugs were the natural option.”
