Plan B Forum

Cheryl Hanna, a popular professor at Vermont Law School, influential scholar on domestic violence laws and highly visible media commentator in Vermont, died by suicide using a handgun, the state medical examiner said Monday.

Paul Henninge, Hanna’s husband, said in a phone interview that his late wife had twice been hospitalized for treatment for depression in the nine days before her July 27 suicide.

“She bought the gun the day before,” he said. “It is shocking that somebody who had voluntarily admitted herself to the hospital” for psychiatric treatment was able to easily buy a gun, he added.

Police would not comment on the origins of the weapon Hanna used. “I honestly don’t know where the handgun came from,” said Bruce Bovat, the public information officer for the Burlington Police Department. Officers involved in the investigation “hope it would be wrapped up in a couple of days,” at which point what had been learned about the source of the handgun would be disclosed, he added.

But Henninge said he had been told by Burlington police detectives that Hanna had bought the gun at a local store.

Henninge said that Hanna’s depression had progressed in “a quick downward spiral” and that she had first sought help from her general practitioner and had then begun seeing a therapist. She was admitted twice to Fletcher Allen Hospital for treatment, once for three days in the emergency ward, a second time for three days in a psychiatric ward, he said. She was released after she seemed to calm and showed some signs of stabilizing, he said. The next day she bought a gun, and the day after that she shot herself, according to Henninge.

Mike Noble, a Fletcher Allen spokesman, said that he could not comment on Henninge’s account because of patient confidentiality rules.

The availability of firearms is an important risk factor in suicide. “Firearms are used in over half of all completed suicides in the United States, and firearm suicides outnumber firearm homicides almost 2 to 1,” according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, which advocates “reducing access to firearms for persons at risk for suicide as part of our overall policy approach for reducing suicide.”

Henninge said he was “not particularly anti-gun” but that some extreme views about the rights to gun ownership struck him as a “sort of antiquated notion of individual power.”

The news of Hanna’s death in her Burlington home five days after her 48th birthday elicited a chorus of grief over the tragedy and praise for her life’s work and humanity. “What an incredible loss, not only for the VLS community, but for the country and the world,” said Tim Duane, an environmental attorney in Santa Cruz, Calif., and former VLS colleague. “She just profoundly (affected) everyone she interacted with.”

During her lifetime, Hanna provided insight and passion as a legal scholar and commentator on the Constitution, domestic violence and the environment. Her death has been followed by a public discussion about depression and suicide that could now encompass issues about gun safety and availability.

The conversation began less than two days after Hanna’s death with a Facebook post by Henninge that described “a trying two months with my wife’s relatively recent battle with severe depression.” Three days later Henninge made the link to suicide explicit when he told an interviewer from Burlington television station WCAX that Hanna “had made up her mind that she wanted to take her life, and she did.” Hanna “had been caught in a vicious, dark place, where she couldn’t get out,” he added.

Depression “is a really common illness,” said Paul Holtzheimer, a psychiatrist and director of the Mood Disorders Service at Dartmouth Medical School and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon. “If you haven’t experienced it yourself, you do know somebody who has.”

During their lifetimes, one in six Americans experience what the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders calls major depressive disorder. The malady manifests as a depressed mood or diminished interest or pleasure in most activities that lasts “most of the day, nearly every day” for at least a two-week period. Diagnosis requires evidence of at least four other symptoms from a list that includes changes in weight or sleep patterns, agitation, fatigue, feelings of worthlessness or guilt, inability to concentrate or make decisions or recurring thoughts of death or suicide.

An episode of major depression “may come out of the blue at any age,” Holtzheimer said. Depression sometimes follows a trauma or major life event, while some people have a propensity for major depression, he said: “It’s usually both.”

At least 30 to 40 percent of the population experience less intense or shorter bouts of depression that are still “functionally significant,” Holtzheimer said. But it remains an uphill battle to get the public to recognize depression as a mental illness with a biological basis, he added: “Depression is not a character deficit.”

The challenge of publicly revealing or seeking help remains a serious obstacle to those with depression, he said. “Stigma prevents people from getting the treatment they need.”

Hanna had been concerned about the impact disclosure of her illness would have on her as a public figure, Hennige said. She worried that her adversaries were “all going to find out and take me down,” he added. “She had a tendency to worst-case-scenario things.”

Depression is “a very significant risk factor” for suicide, Holtzheimer said. Anywhere from 80 to 90 percent of suicides “come in the context of a depressive episode,” he added.

While electroconvulsive therapy has historically been used to provide effective relief for the most severe depression, the current first-line treatments are medications, or talk therapy, Holtzheimer said. Among those who get treatment “a majority get better,” he said. “Suicides, by and large, are preventable deaths.”

In 2011, a total of 39,518 suicides were reported in the United States, according to the suicide prevention foundation. While that did not rank suicide among the 10 leading causes of death in the general population, it was the second leading cause of death for individuals ages 15 to 34, the fourth leading cause of death for ages 35 to 44 and the fifth leading cause among those 45 to 54.

Geoffrey B. Shields had a rare gift for paying attention. Students remember the affable former dean of Vermont Law School hiking with them to Kent’s Ledge and hosting dinners with his wife, Genie. They remember his gentle spirit, his caring nature and his commitment to fairness.

Shields died Saturday at age 68, holding Genie’s hand in their Guilford, Vt., home. After a diagnosis of mantle cell lymphoma, a rare non-Hodgkin lymphoma, three and a half years ago, Shields stepped down from being the school’s dean and president after four decades as a practicing attorney and educator.

His son, Jordan Shields, 39, of Chicago, remembers his father’s love for mentoring people.

“He was an incredibly soft-spoken and caring person,” he said. “He loved spending time trying to help people that entered his life. That’s what I’ll remember about him.”

While Shields presided as Vermont Law School’s seventh dean, from 2004 to 2012, the school strengthened the reputation of its environmental law program. Shields established several institutes, including the U.S.-China Partnership for Environmental Law and the VLS Institute for Energy and the Environment.

During the school’s 39th Commencement ceremony in May, both Shields and his wife received honorary degrees.

“Our hearts are heavy as we share the news of Dean Shields’ passing,” Edward C. Mattes, chairman of the law school’s Board of Trustees Chairman, said in a statement Monday.

When he wasn’t working in the field of law, Shields prized time in the outdoors with his family. When his daughter, Comfort, was young, he took her on canoeing trips. Jordan Shields remembers the family hiking and skiing together. Shields remained close with his parents and siblings, too, at one point moving three doors down from his childhood home in Lake Forest, Ill., so he could check in at his parents’ breakfast table on morning runs.

Mark Latham, a vice dean at Vermont Law School, knew something was different about Shields when the two met at a Chicago law firm in the late ‘80s. Shields invited Latham and other summer associates to have a dinner of smoked turkey at his house.

“That dinner was a classic Jeff and Genie event,” Latham said. “Just the notion that a partner in a large Chicago law firm would have a group of associates to his home was so wonderful, and it just made us all feel so welcome.”

Latham called Shields a “terrific lawyer and mentor,” which is why he was surprised when Shields left his chairman position at Gardner Carton and Douglas for Vermont Law School. Shields had developed a national reputation for his work in not-for-profit law, corporate law, health care law and international trade law, and he had degrees from Harvard College and Yale Law School.

But Latham immediately understood Shields’ move when he visited the rolling hills of Vermont, and soon made the same move himself. As dean, Shields maintained his “ability to connect and to do so in a genuine way,” Latham said.

Under Shields’ leadership, Vermont Law School was one of only two law schools in the country that did not allow recruiters on campus in protest of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law regarding gays and lesbians, and it was the only law school to lose some federal funding because of its anti-discriminatory position.

“That was a powerful statement and not an easy choice in some respects,” Latham said.

Shields approached his cancer in a “remarkable way,” Latham said. “He continued to work even from the hospital... It was just amazing to me that he was fully engaged while going through chemotherapy.”

Micaela Tucker, a former VLS student, remembers Shields perched on the edge of his seat, listening closely to whomever was speaking.

“That’s a truly wonderful characteristic of a good leader, someone who can put all the noise aside and tend to the person and the issue right in front of them,” said Tucker, a 2009 graduate who worked with Shields at the school’s law review.

Tucker, now an assistant attorney general in the Vermont Attorney General’s Office, remembers a four-hour dinner at Shields’ Tunbridge house. Under a chandelier lit with candles, Shields told stories and laughed with students, his attention attuned completely to them.

“It was magical,” Tucker said. “It was like he had nowhere else to be... It felt like that night lasted forever. It was that feeling of suspending time.”

Shields was a “statesman in the true meaning of the word,” said state Rep. Sarah Buxton, D-Tunbridge, a former student of his.

“He was compassionate and thoughtful, and he valued honesty and integrity,” she said. “He cared very much about students and about people, first and foremost, before policy and even his own reputation.”

Online, former students, colleagues and friends left tributes to Shields, who was known on campus as the man in a bow tie. “He lived and breathed and believed in VLS,” wrote Pavel Reznikov. “A true scholar and a gentleman, a rare kind.”

Wrote South Royalton resident Shannon Stoddard, who remembered his kindly presence in town: “I can tell you how he did at being human; he was wonderful.”

Shields’ grandson Oliver Parry wrote an essay in February about his grandfather, published on the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s website.

“I dream about being a lot like Pop Pop when I grow up,” wrote Oliver, then 9 years old. “I am hoping that I never stop learning in life and that I always take time to enjoy the things around me like Pop Pop does.”

Now, the phone calls keep coming to the Shields home, Jordan Shields said, with people telling stories about his father. They tell Jordan how ethical his father was, how he always stood up in the name of fairness.

“He always believed in doing the right thing,” Jordan said.

A memorial service for Shields will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. on Aug. 16, at Vermont Law School. His family has asked that any gifts in his memory be sent to the Hallowell Singers, 191 Canal St., Brattleboro, Vt. 05301, or to The Jeff and Genie Shields Prize at Vermont Law School, 164 Chelsea St., South Royalton Vt. 05068.