In May 2019 Kryst was named Miss USA at the age of 28, then the oldest Miss USA ever crowned. On her social media, she was seen and praised as being both beautiful and smart. Both fun-loving and caring. Plus, her crowning was celebrated by the Black community far and wide. While she was smiling and laughing on social media, behind the scenes was a different story.
In a 2021 article for Allure, Kryst wrote briefly about her eight-day hospital stay in 2015. Though she didn’t go into detail, her mom, April Simpkins, says that the hospitalization was following a failed suicide attempt. Before the article came out, Kryst called her mom to reveal the truth of the hospital stay in the magazine. In the end, she decided not to include it.
Ultimately, she succumbed to her depression and sadly took her own life on January 30, 2022.
The news of Kryst’s death in 2022 ignited nuanced conversations about depression and how it presents, prompting discussion on the often invisible struggles people face.
More than two years after her daughter’s death, Simpkins is sharing her story to help others who are silently struggling with mental health issues with the publication of Kryst’s posthumous memoir, By the Time You Read This: The Space Between Cheslie’s Smile and Mental Illness.
"Just hours after my win, I had to delete vomit-face emojis that a few accounts had plastered all over the comments on my Instagram page. More than one person messaged me telling me to kill myself.
All of this only added to my long-standing insecurities — the feeling that everyone around me knew more than I did, that everyone else was better at my job, and that I didn’t deserve this title. People would soon find out I was a fraud. I felt like an imposter, but not just in pageants.
Over the next few weeks, the media coverage continued. I almost always suppressed my panicky thoughts and feelings of inadequacy during my interviews. I only felt like a failure afterward, as I meticulously picked apart each of my responses and kicked myself for not using a better word or saying a profound phrase or interjecting humor or throwing out a useful stat.
Winning Miss USA hadn’t made my imposter syndrome go away. Instead, I was waiting for people to realize I didn’t have a clue about what I was doing. I’d perfected how to deal with that feeling in competition or in small doses— I could compartmentalize anything in short bursts. I’d immediately focus my thoughts on positive statements of power, but that only lasted for so long."
The morning of Jan. 30, 2022, Simpkins writes, she received a devastating text from Kryst. It began:
“First, I’m sorry. By the time you get this, I won’t be alive anymore, and it makes me even more sad to write this because I know it will hurt you the most . . .”
"At Cheslie’s funeral, I kept thinking, 'I have to survive this because my family shouldn’t have to bury me this soon after losing Cheslie,'” writes Simpkins for PEOPLE. "That was the one thin thread that held me together that day . . . If I died, who would tell the world all the incredible things I knew about my baby girl?"
"[My] daughter was a fighter and yet she was gone. Every day she’d fought persistent depression, until she couldn’t fight anymore. Despite the many ways depression tried to rob her of joy, with near-constant headaches, loneliness, hopelessness, sadness, and a feeling of unworthiness, she still found a way to smile, love, and give. Everyday I’d had with her was a true gift from God. Every day she was here was a victory."
A new report shows that suicide among Black girls and women is unfortunately steadily increasing.
Researchers used data from the National Center for Health Statistics’ Multiple Cause of Death database from 1999 to 2020. The study included 9,271 deaths among individuals who were Black or African American (including those who were Hispanic or Latino/a/x/e and multi-racial) and female ages 15 to 84.
The analysis found suicide rates among Black females in the U.S. increased from 2.1/100,000 in 1999 to 3.4/100,000 in 2020. Rate increases were concentrated in the 15-24 age group, which increased from 1.9 to 4.9/100,000 during this period. When analyzed by census region, suicide rates were highest in the west and suicide numbers were highest in the south.
According to the authors, these findings point to a need for increased access to mental health care for Black girls and women, the reduction of structural racism, and geographically tailored prevention efforts.
If you or someone you know are in crisis, there are options available to help you cope. You can also call the Lifeline at any time to speak to someone and get support. For confidential support available 24/7 for everyone in the United States, call 988.