KVIG Informative

Ty lost her sister Breana to suicide at 26. Now she and her mother, LaTricia, are filling a calendar with yoga, tea parties and journaling for people who are struggling and have told no one.

“To my baby sister, you will forever be missed. My mind doesn’t want to believe it’s true. You were the best auntie and ride or die sister lol. I’m going to miss you calling me say ‘what you doin’.’ I’m going to miss you asking me to do your hair or lashes. The memories can go on forever and that’s what I’ll use to stay afloat. I love You! Rest easy, your big sister Ty.”

Ty wrote those words for her sister, Breana Luckett, who died by suicide at 26. Ty describes her as the most bubbly person she has ever known, someone who was always laughing and joking. The family never saw it coming.

Ty took one lesson from that. If someone like Breana was struggling in silence, she reasoned, a lot of other people must be too. She and her mother, LaTricia, founded Adore Bre Wellness and Fitness, a grassroots, family-run effort in Las Vegas. Ty said she wanted to keep her sister’s name alive and to bring awareness to suicide and mental health.

The plan is a calendar of gatherings: yoga, brunch, tea parties, a journal-writing event, maybe a hike. Ty said the point is to get people out of the house and around others who may be facing similar stories. She called suicide a taboo subject that almost no one wants to admit they are thinking about, and she wants the events to make that conversation easier to start.

She does not want a hotline call to be the only option people see. Ty said everyone needs something different when they are struggling. For one person it is a hug. For another it is money trouble that feels like drowning. For another it is a relationship. She wants the group to focus on understanding that people of every age and gender can reach that point for different reasons.

Ty said she wants to reach every age, from children to older adults. Her own 13-year-old daughter tells friends at school about her aunt all the time. The state’s numbers show how wide the problem runs. The Nevada Department of Health and Human Services Office of Analytics recorded 400 suicide deaths in Clark County in 2023, a rate of 16.1 per 100,000 residents after adjusting for age.

The office’s violent-death records for 2018 through 2022 list 2,033 suicide deaths among Clark County residents. They include 27 children ages 5 to 14 and 243 people ages 15 to 24. The rate was highest among residents 75 and older, at 36.1 per 100,000. About 77 percent of the dead were male.

Young people sit inside those numbers. Nevada teenagers ages 15 to 19 died by suicide at a rate of 13.4 per 100,000 from 2022 to 2024, against 9.7 nationally, according to federal death data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

Preliminary results from the state’s 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, presented to a legislative committee in April 2024 by University of Nevada, Reno researcher Kristen Clements-Nolle, put the problem in the classroom. Among Nevada high school students, 42.4 percent reported persistent sadness, 21.0 percent seriously considered suicide and 11.1 percent attempted it in the past year. Among middle schoolers, 20.5 percent considered suicide and 7.4 percent attempted.

Adults report the same strain. In the Office of Analytics profile, 20.8 percent of Clark County adults reported 14 or more bad mental health days a month in 2023, up 6.8 percentage points from 2022. Another 21.2 percent had been told they have a depressive disorder, and Clark County residents made 66,051 mental-health-related emergency department visits that year, 67.6 percent of the state’s total.

The violent-death records also speak to the silence Ty describes. They show that 21.1 percent of those who died had told another person about suicidal thoughts or plans within a month of their death.

Ty has been on the quiet side of that herself. She said there were times she struggled and told no one, and that nobody around her knew what she was going through. What people need, she said, is someone they can talk to who will listen without bias, a particular concern in a city as varied as Las Vegas.

Federal health agencies point to connection as part of the answer. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls promoting healthy connections a key strategy in its suicide prevention work, and says connection may protect against suicidal behavior by reducing isolation, encouraging healthy coping and building a sense of belonging, self-worth and resilience.

The U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on social connection puts numbers on isolation. It says loneliness raises the risk of premature death by 26 percent and social isolation by 29 percent. Adults who often feel lonely have more than double the odds of developing depression, it says, and loneliness in children and adolescents raises their risk of depression and anxiety for as long as nine years. Among people already at higher risk because of difficult life experiences, the advisory says, frequently confiding in others is linked to up to 15 percent lower odds of depression.

Her path to this work was not abrupt. Ty is a phlebotomist and a business owner, and she said friends have long come to her for advice and told her she should be a therapist. She now intends to become a certified therapist but is not rushing. She wants to be sure she can carry other people’s problems home with her at night. Breana’s death, she said, made her feel that this might be her calling.

Nevada’s 988 line served nearly 42,000 people in 2024, according to a state memo. Shannon Bennett, a bureau chief at the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health, said use of the line has almost doubled since the country switched to 988. A Southern Nevada call center opened in 2024.

Behind the line sits a thin workforce. As of Dec. 31, 2025, Nevada had 57 federally designated mental health professional shortage areas, with about 20.6 percent of the need met. Removing those designations would take 153 more practitioners, according to federal shortage data. Those figures are statewide.

Ty said it is family-run, with her mother helping and her two brothers working in the background, along with board members. Anyone who wants to take part can reach the group on Instagram under Adore Bre Wellness and Fitness or by email at adorebre1111@yahoo.com. The founders said they are still new and open to any idea about what the next gathering should be.