INDIANAPOLIS — A family hopes their unthinkable tragedy can encourage others to seek help.
"A lot of what we experienced was a lack of support, a lack of knowledge of how to handle this," Andrea Thomas, the mother of “T” and Ayonna, said.
Back in September, we met T. WRTV’s Amber Grigley shared her nine-year journey with Big Brothers Big Sisters. Their time together that day opened the door to a bigger conversation about T's twin sister, Ayonna.
"She was in an inpatient facility, a locked facility due to her mental health. I got a call that you don't really want to get from someone associated with the facility, and they needed me to come there right away,” said Thomas. "They let us know that Ayanna had chosen to be free."
In April 2021, Ayonna died by suicide at the age of 13.
"She had been fighting and battling for several years. Her earliest episodes are as early as nine years old," Thomas said.
Thomas said Ayonna was initially diagnosed with anxiety and depression, but years later, and after more evaluations, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
"A lot of the mental health field does not give those types of diagnoses before 13," Thomas said. "There's a variety of things that we were able to try, but there was nothing that we could try to keep her out in an outpatient facility."
"Although she was sick, she tried to hold that back because she was a good person," T said.
T said she had a difficult time accepting the loss of her twin.
"I can't imagine what it's like to look exactly like someone, have the same DNA as someone, and grow up so closely related to this person, and then they started experiencing things that make them a different person," Thomas said.
T credits her "big" sister Maggie Pollard and Big Brothers Big Sisters for saving her life.
"With mental health, I think it's so much easier to just kind of brush it off and be like, 'It's OK, it's OK, it's OK, it's OK,' until it's very much not OK. And going through everything with T and Ayonna has made me such a huge advocate of go get help," Pollard said.
T said although she is still fighting through her own depression after losing her twin, she still wants to encourage others to find support and resources to hopefully save lives.
"There is no stop sign for grief like you can't stop it and you can't make it slow down," T said.
Thomas said since Ayonna's passing, she has created The Yonna Foundation for mental health advocacy and support.
