{"id":1054,"date":"2008-03-26T09:45:37","date_gmt":"2008-03-26T09:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/young-pilot-ends-her-life-at-2.html"},"modified":"2008-03-26T09:45:37","modified_gmt":"2008-03-26T09:45:37","slug":"young-pilot-ends-her-life-at-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/young-pilot-ends-her-life-at-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Young Pilot Ends Her Life at 26"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was saddened to read about <a href=\"http:\/\/ap.google.com\/article\/ALeqM5j2RC1zrx-8YOca5ldMq7Gpws8tmgD8VG2S8O0\">the suicide of young pilot Vicki Van Meter,<\/a> who made news in the 1990s when she piloted a plane across America at age 11 and from the US to Europe at age 12. Her body was found, with an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, at her home. She was 26.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ap.google.com\/article\/ALeqM5j2RC1zrx-8YOca5ldMq7Gpws8tmgD8VG2S8O0\">According to the AP story by Ramit Plushnick-Masti<\/a>, she was battling depression &#8220;but her family thought she had been dealing with her problems.&#8221; Her brother said that &#8220;she was unhappy but it was hard for her to open up,&#8221; that she was opposed to taking medication.<br \/>\nHere&#8217;s my case in point regarding my J.K. Rowling argument that no one thing can keep you alive when you are truly depressed: Before Van Meter&#8217;s second trip, across the Atlantic, she said this: &#8220;If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.&#8221; But that simply isn&#8217;t true for so many persons struggling with mood disorders. They absolutely have to be treated just as they would with chemotherapy had they breast cancer.<br \/>\nThis girl (and woman) didn&#8217;t lack will power and discipline. And yet she could not, with mind control alone, win against the beast of depression. She accomplished more than any other 11 and 12-year-old did. But, like Holocaust survivor and Jewish chemist Primo Levi, she died at the mercy of her thoughts.<br \/>\nEvery time I read a story like this, I thank God for the information that I have, for my education on mood disorder, and for the reader support network here on Beyond Blue. The next time you&#8217;re hard on yourself about your thoughts getting the best of you, just remember that you ARE fighting a life-threatening illness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was saddened to read about the suicide of young pilot Vicki Van Meter, who made news in the 1990s when she piloted a plane across America at age 11 and from the US to Europe at age 12. Her body was found, with an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, at her home. She was 26.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Young Pilot Ends Her Life at 26 - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/young-pilot-ends-her-life-at-2.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Young Pilot Ends Her Life at 26 - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was saddened to read about the suicide of young pilot Vicki Van Meter, who made news in the 1990s when she piloted a plane across America at age 11 and from the US to Europe at age 12. Her body was found, with an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, at her home. She was 26.&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/young-pilot-ends-her-life-at-2.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-03-26T09:45:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Young Pilot Ends Her Life at 26 - Beyond Blue","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/young-pilot-ends-her-life-at-2.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Young Pilot Ends Her Life at 26 - Beyond Blue","og_description":"I was saddened to read about the suicide of young pilot Vicki Van Meter, who made news in the 1990s when she piloted a plane across America at age 11 and from the US to Europe at age 12. Her body was found, with an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, at her home. She was 26.&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/young-pilot-ends-her-life-at-2.html","og_site_name":"Beyond Blue","article_published_time":"2008-03-26T09:45:37+00:00","author":"Beyond Blue","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/young-pilot-ends-her-life-at-2.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/young-pilot-ends-her-life-at-2.html","name":"Young Pilot Ends Her Life at 26 - Beyond Blue","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-03-26T09:45:37+00:00","dateModified":"2008-03-26T09:45:37+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/47318cdf8063cc052eccff0c99db4e75"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/young-pilot-ends-her-life-at-2.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/young-pilot-ends-her-life-at-2.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/03\/young-pilot-ends-her-life-at-2.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Young Pilot Ends Her Life at 26"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/","name":"Beyond Blue","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Therese J. 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Borchard writes the daily blog, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet.com. She is the author of Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression &amp; Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes and The Pocket Therapist. You may find her at her personal blog, her website, or you may follow her on Twitter @thereseborchard.","sameAs":["http:\/\/thereseborchard.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/author\/tborchard"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}