We speak with President Jefferson this week about death and suicide, specifically about the deaths of Meriwether Lewis, James Hemmings and Alexander Hamilton.

After the death of his wife in 1782, Jefferson wrote, “All my plans of comfort and happiness reversed by a single event and nothing answering in prospect before me but a gloom un-brightened with one cheerful expectation. This miserable kind of existence is really too burdensome to be borne, and were it not for the infidelity of deserting the sacred charge left me, I could not wish its continuance a moment.”

You can reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

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