Letter to the Editor: Hats

To the Editor:

May was Mental Health Awareness month. It is a little known or talked about fact that most hospitalizations for mental health concerns and suicides do not occur during the holidays, but during the spring months. There are all sorts of theories as to why that is. One of the most widely accepted is that individuals who are depressed get just enough energy with the change to spring weather they either choose to slug through deeper puddles of isolation and despair, or attempt to complete suicide.

I have my own theory. It’s all about hats. A person can either hide under or make a statement with a hat. For cripes sake, the Kentucky Derby TV coverage was more about the hats than horses!

Hats may become a ritual or necessity. All winter long, it’s about grabbing a hat before braving the cold cruel world. Spring rains typically require some sort of headgear or umbrella. Remember those plastic rain bonnets and babushkas?

Hats may also hide or express who you are, or even who you are not. For me, as a cancer patient and a person with a history of mental illness, a hat would often become a helmet.

This May when the weather got warmer and my hair started growing back, my whole world changed once again. I could walk outside without a hat and no one really noticed, except me. People could no longer see the depth of my depression magnified by having a terminal illness because I wasn’t wearing one of “those” hats.

I began to feel naked without a hat. Maybe hats had become one of my not-so-nasty habits? Then recently a dear friend said to me in the comfort of her magical home, “Take off the damn hat, Annie, and leave it off!”

It is important to appreciate how much friends, family and support systems can determine if a fellow human being will be able to make it in this world without their hats.

Thank you,

Ann Gallagher
“Catfish Annie”
Lansing

P.S. FYI, I am still wearing my fishing hat.