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After the Padillas lost their 15-year-old son to suicide, the family set out on a mission to ensure that Jack Padilla’s memory was never forgotten, trying to save several lives in the process.
One way Jack’s brother John Padilla did it was by making the movie The Mountain in My Mind: Mental Health in the Ski Industry. His 30-minute conversation about mental health in mountain communities preceded Tuesday’s nearly hour-long film screening at Biller.
Corey Levy, Director of Wellness, Vail Resorts, Casey Wolfington, Senior Director of Community Behavioral Health, Eagle Valley Behavioral Health, and Nadia Guerriero, Chief Operating Officer of Beaver Creek Resort, will lead a panel discussion before the film. increase.
Beaver Creek Resorts communications manager Rachel Levitsky said: That mental health his program, his Epic Wellness, was launched earlier this year.
In addition to providing free therapy to employees, dependents and roommates, the program offers expert wellness coaching and an extensive clinical network that includes therapists who specialize in the LGBTQ+ and BIPOC communities.
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the film
“The Mountain in My Mind” is the first film to show skiers traversing a “suicide zone” in the Rocky Mountain region. The film opens with the stats that the #1 cause of death in the Rocky Mountains has a suicide rate 2.9 times his national average. This includes things like mental health stigma and the “paradox of paradise” that seem to promise happiness, but the cost of living, a temporary population living away from family support, wherever you go, you are there. I’m in
In this film, seven skiers and John Padilla himself talk about their challenges and the solutions they found, especially within the ski community.
That’s how a 20-year-old Montana woman spoke about her struggles growing up with a mother “wrapped in substance abuse” and how she didn’t keep her problems so secret when she was younger. It starts with talking about what you want. Then a man from Massachusetts tells how he became addicted to painkillers after a skiing injury.
“Skiing gave me something to keep me sober, something I love,” he says in the film. He added that skiers were very supportive when he said no to beer.
Other athletes, like Claire Chapman from Alta, Utah, have talked about developing an eating disorder and if they could give their 12-year-old self advice, believe in yourself, listen to yourself, and help others. It says to talk to about her challenge.
A man in Connecticut recounts his first manic episode in college and how skiing helped him keep his balance during the winter, while another describes how life has changed during the pandemic. We share what it felt like (and how skiing is such an expressive outlet). Yet another athlete opens up about the denial, loneliness, and self-blame that comes from sexual assault and being assaulted by someone they trusted.
One of the most difficult and healing interviews John Padilla encountered while making the film was from California resident Forrest Coutts, who lost his brother to suicide. In the film, Coutts encourages people to be kind to everyone “because they don’t know the backstory or what happened to him ten years ago.”
“It made me realize I’m not alone,” John Padilla said in a telephone interview. Please, please, please, talk to your friends about your mental health.”
John Padilla echoes that sentiment in the film, where his 15-year-old brother, an empath, was put on life support for nine days after a suicide attempt (one day after being shredded in a mountain). I am explaining what I was doing. He passed away on February 14, 2019.
“We as a society have a duty as a society because we should trust that empaths care about us. All right, I promise, it’s a lot easier to have a conversation than to bury your brother.” As a lifelong skier who grew up in Colorado (now living in Montana), he He added that skiing helped him get through the loss.
process
He initially started brainstorming about making a five- to ten-minute film in the fall of 2021, but when he started talking to skiers across the country, it seemed like everyone knew someone who had died by suicide. ‘ he said. “I pitched[the idea for the movie to Ski]to the company and they all worked out.”
What started small quickly grew to talking to over 100 people and interviews ranging from 30 minutes to 4 hours. He soon realized that suicide prevention was “too small – the market is wider”, and after driving 37,000 miles across the country for filming, he finally edited the project to cover everything from parks to skis. We have narrowed it down to a small number of athletes presenting different modalities of It was a big pile, covering mental health topics from assault and substance abuse to suicide and eating disorders.
“We wanted it to have a broad reach,” he said.
During his tour of the film, he has heard from countless people how it changed their lives. I was thinking of suicide, but now I’m talking to my mom, taking medicine, getting treatment…”
“This movie is no downer,” he said. “The goal is to keep[the audience]uplifted throughout. In the editorial, I highlighted the advice. I want people to walk away with the hope that
In fact, in making the film, John Padilla found more healing because he discovered “a community of people in the snow industry who are really passionate about mental health.”
He’s currently raising money for his next film, which revolves around mental health and skiing, but with a slightly different model: it follows Olympians from four different countries, making skiing more artistic and even more uplifting. It is styled to present it in a way that
