By Melissa Stagnaro

Contributor

OXFORD – More than 100 golfers will take to the links Sunday at Oxford’s Blue Stone golf course to bring the conversation about suicide and mental illness out of the darkness and into the light.

It is the sixth year the course will host the event, Team Chenango’s Out of the Darkness Golf Tournament.

Changing the conversation about suicide and mental illness has become a personal mission for event organizer Danielle Marshman.

“Every year suicide claims more lives than war, murder and natural disasters combined, and yet we don’t talk about it,” she explained.

In a small town, she said, people are often even less willing to admit it’s something that can happen close to home. But Marshman, herself a survivor or suicide loss, knows it can.

In 2001 her father Dan, a prominent Oxford dairy farmer and businessman, took his own life.

“It has been 15 years since Dad died by suicide from a disease that can be prevented if we can just start talking about it,” she said.

It was a desire to prevent others from enduring a similar loss that lead Marshman to get involved with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), an organization she discovered as part of her own healing journey.

“AFSP is really the leader in the fight against suicide,” she said. “They fund research, create educational programs, advocate for public policy, and support survivors of suicide loss. All with the goal of reducing the annual suicide rate 20 percent by 2025.”

Each year, AFSP raises money with community walks across the country. Their largest fundraiser is a dusk ‘til dawn walk called the Out of the Darkness Overnight.

Marshman walked in her first Overnight in Boston in 2010. This year’s event, to be held in June in New York City, will mark the seventh consecutive year she’s participated in the more than 16 mile overnight walk to end suicide.

She described the walk as an intense experience, filled with laughter, tears and moments of physical and emotional exhaustion. But it is also a time of healing and hope, she said.

“As you walk through the night, you feel safe and cared-for in a community where everyone supports each other,” she said.

It’s this type of atmosphere that Marshman and her Team Chenango teammates have tried to create with their annual golf tournament. The event is one of the ways they raise money to meet the walk’s fundraising requirements of $1,000 per person.