You know when you see a headline and you just can’t believe that it’s real? When you open up a news story and you are just completely blown away by the fact that people can be so terrible, and that cruelty and apathy are so widespread in our culture? That happened to me today.

I saw an article on one of my friends' Facebook wall. “Michelle Carter’s and Conrad Roy’s Messages Before Suicide.” You’ve probably read about it somewhere online, but if not, you can read the whole gut-wrenching tale here.

Two teens met online, one struggling with a severe and dangerous case of depression, and the other a dangerous sociopath of her own breed. When Conrad expressed that he was considering suicide, Michelle sent him pages of text messages encouraging him to follow through.

It took a lot of convincing on Michelle’s part, but eventually and unfortunately, Conrad did kill himself.

Michelle is being charged with involuntary manslaughter after investigators found her text conversations with Conrad. She’s now 18 years old, and she is being tried as an adult.

Personally, I don’t really think involuntary manslaughter covers it. The word involuntary implies that it was accidental, or something that she didn’t intend to do. But every part of this was intentional. She wanted Conrad to kill himself, and wasted no time lamenting over his death on social media after he was found dead.

What Michelle wanted was attention, it wasn't Conrad. Michelle wanted people to feel sorry for her because she “loved” the boy who killed himself. She acted selfishly and brutally, and as far as I’m concerned, she murdered Conrad herself.

This story is absolutely heartbreaking to me, and it brings up a topic that I think we struggle with understanding in American culture. When we’re faced with dark feelings and emotions like these in other people, we assume that they’re the ones looking for attention. We say that they’re just being dramatic, and that they need to get over it and push on.

We call suicide a selfish act, saying that people who commit suicide are only thinking of themselves. Hopefully, stories like Conrad’s can help teach people the truth about depression and suicide. People who commit or consider committing suicide are not being dramatic or seeking attention. They aren’t being selfish and they shouldn’t be accused of any of these things.

On the contrary, people who are so depressed that they consider self-harm, are probably desperate to find a solution, hoping to find a way to stop feeling so terrible. Anyone who feels this way deserves nothing but love, acceptance, and support to help him or her find a path back to healing.

As a society, I think it’s time that we take the initiative to start preventing these things from happening. We have plenty of initiatives and hotlines that anyone feeling this way can call, but are we really being proactive enough?

It’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s not going to be as simple as a few new programs or families and friends pledging to keep a closer eye. It’s about a transformation of our culture and of our rhetoric when it comes to depression and suicide. It’s not a deficiency, and it’s not about being unstable. It’s about needing some extra help, just like everyone does sometimes. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, and it’s nothing that can’t get better.

One suicide is too many, and we have the power to stop many more.

Please take a moment to save the United States National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255