Understanding the Loss of Jonathan Brostoff

Ald. Jonathan Brostoff at Charter Meeting. Photo taken April 16, 2024 by Sophie Bolich.

There is a huge amount of sadness in Milwaukee and this state over the death of Milwaukee alderman and former state representative Jonathan Brostoff. We don’t yet know all the details, but the county medical examiner’s office is treating the investigation as an apparent suicide involving a gun, and the reaction of so many people I talked to — who knew and admired Brostoff — is why? He seemed like such a great guy and a man of “endless optimism,” as Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley put it — and not someone carrying pain and darkness within him.

But in October 2019 Brostoff wrote an op-ed published by Urban Milwaukee and the Wisconsin State Journal which talked about the problem of suicide with guns and how important that issue is.

“I am an extremely passionate and involved advocate for mental health awareness and suicide prevention in the Legislature, from my work on the Assembly Committee on Mental Health, to the bills I have introduced and supported,” he wrote. “I was impacted by suicide in my personal life almost three years ago. I lost a very close friend, Brian, to suicide by firearm.”

But Brostoff didn’t stop there. He decided to reveal his own past — of his times wrestling with suicide — and the details were dark indeed.

Before his days as a politician, he noted, “I was just a kid in Milwaukee who was living with mental illness. As a teenager, I had been diagnosed with ADD, ADHD, severe depression and bipolar disorder — and I was struggling. I wish those diagnoses and the attendant medications, hospital stays, and all of the other steps my family and I took at the time had been enough. But as is the case for many facing mental health crises, they weren’t.

“All those years ago, staring down the darkness, I attempted to take my own life. More than once. And as someone who has faced that darkness and lived to share my story, I am so thankful I didn’t have access to a gun when I thought that leaving this world was the best way to handle everything that came with it.”

It had to be hard for him to reveal this stuff. But Brostoff, as his colleagues have noted, was passionate about doing the right thing, of standing up and being counted on tough issues. He wanted to dramatize the roles of guns in suicides to his colleagues in the Legislature who he felt were not taking the issue seriously, and so he offered his personal testimony as a way to do this.

“For people contemplating suicide,” he wrote, “access to a firearm is like having your own personal, and permanent, ‘delete’ button. And let me tell you: having the power to use that delete button at your absolute lowest moment — when thoughts don’t make sense and when calm, structured thinking is no longer part of the equation — is not something that anyone facing those types of struggles is equipped to handle.

“As difficult as it is to share, I can confidently say that, if I had had a gun all those years ago, I would not be here today.”

Is that what ultimately happened to him this week at the young age of 41, with so much of his life ahead of him, with so many years left to work for the community he loved? We may never know, but by all accounts he loved being a father and described his wife Diana Vang Brostoff as “the love of my life.” He had everything to live for, but perhaps in a dark time of despair that seemed impossible to overcome, he decided to use that delete button.

And when someone does pull that dreadful trigger, those who loved the person blame themselves. What could they have done, what could they have said to prevent this suicide?

But that’s not how Jonathan Brostoff saw it. He knew from past experience that suicidal thoughts are often not rational, and can be ended so quickly with access to a gun that they are much harder to prevent.

“Time and again at task force hearings, we listened to families, friends and community members tell stories of people who had lost their lives to suicide by firearm,” he wrote. “We heard it in rural and urban areas, and from farmers, veterans, law enforcement, health care professionals, teenagers and many more: Access to firearms can be a death sentence to those experiencing a mental health crisis…More than 50% of deaths by suicide are completed with a gun. And for suicide attempts involving guns, the completion rate is 85%. Compare that to the completion rate of 5% for attempts not involving a gun.”

For all the many people who liked and admired — and loved — Jonathan, it will be hard to find any consolation. But his op-ed points to a way to find something positive out of his loss. To have a real Task Force on Suicide Prevention rather than a “publicity task force,” as he put it. And to find common ground on possible solutions that reduce access to guns and thereby help prevent such suicides. Perhaps that could lead to real substantive legislation — ideally a bill named after Jonathan Brostoff — that makes it harder to push that delete button and destroy so many lives and families.