To the outside observer, Stephen Rose was both an accomplished and purposeful young man. He was a graduate of Harvard College and recently earned a master’s in psychology; he was also in the process of choosing among his law school acceptances. His path forward, however, was complicated by the fact that he had been battling mental illness for years.
In the last hours of his life in February 2014, in a moment of extreme crisis, Rose contacted mental health care providers and called 911. Despite doing all that he could to get the help he needed, Rose ended his own life on the college campus where he had spent his formative undergraduate years.
“The worst possible thing happened to our family,” says Evan Rose, Stephen’s younger brother. In an attempt to make sense of the tragedy, Evan composed a post. “What happened to Stephen and our family is something that ‘happens to someone else.’ Mental health issues exist at and beyond the fringe of acceptable conversation,” he wrote in one section. “People are afraid to speak about it and those afflicted are even more afraid to seek help for fear of being ostracized.”
Evan posted his essay to Tumbler, allowing it to autopost to Facebook and Twitter, without giving too much thought to the response he might receive. He was surprised, but moved, when unexpected messages started pouring in. “I got dozens and dozens of emails from people in my network, people who are young professionals or who are in college, who are struggling with mental health issues,” Evan says.
The messages reminded Evan and his family, in the midst of their grief, that they were not alone. Other families were concerned about a son, a brother, a sister or a daughter who were fighting the same sort of fight Stephen fought. Evan’s post helped open up a dialogue among his friends about the kinds of issues they previously faced in isolation.
When the Rose family looked around to find what sort of resources were available to families of color with children in college, they found that there was no overarching framework for colleges to follow when addressing the specific needs of minority mental health. In response, the family decided to marshal their resources to create a fund that would help promote mental and emotional wellness among minority college students.
The fruit of their efforts is the Steve Fund, an organization that is dedicated to raising awareness about the specific mental health challenges that plague minority communities. Less than two years after the family’s devastating loss, their efforts are already animating a conversation that previously was set on mute. “Our goal is to try and make sure that no other family has to go through what we went through, while at the same time raising the dialogue on the issues of mental health in the minority community,” Evan says.
