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Steamboat Springs — When Bryce Mackie began making the film "Eternal High," when he was 16 years old, he didn't really understand the implications.

In the film, Mackie talks about feeling numb and despondent as he locks himself in his room and begins taking pills in a suicide attempt. The short film has since won numerous awards, been accepted at more than 60 film festivals and has launched Mackie's speaking career. But it also forced him to come to terms with a depression that was part of his life.

During a Thursday evening presentation at Steamboat Springs High School, Mackie, who now attends Columbia College in Chicago, said that one day he began crying at the dinner table and that his parents realized the signs of depression in their 16-year-old son. Since that time, Mackie was hospitalized with psychosis and rediagnosed with bipolar disorder, leading him to wild mood swings between manic and depressive.

"I just sort of had this emptiness I've never been able to fill," Mackie narrates in his film. "I can't see a point to day-to-day life."

Since he was diagnosed and began receiving treatment for his mental health problems, Mackie has started to spread suicide prevention awareness.

As a wrap-up to the Sept. 6 to 12 National Suicide Prevention Week, the Steamboat Springs Reaching Everyone Preventing Suicide group, known as REPS, invited Mackie to do a series of presentations across Routt County. During his stay, Mackie spoke to the public and students

at Soroco and Steamboat Springs high schools and at Colorado Mountain College's Alpine Campus.

The all-school assembly at Steamboat Springs High School will be a launching pad for a new Signs of Suicide, curriculum, counselor Kelle Schmidt said.

The national curriculum includes techniques and lessons to help students and adults recognize the signs of depression in teens.

"I think we all know that we've got this issue in our community that we want to deal with straight-on and do as much prevention as we can," Schmidt said.

Mackie said one of the biggest problems in schools is the unwillingness of students, boys in particular, to admit they are dealing with depression issues. Parents who tell their children to "buck up" instead of addressing depression can create harmful situations, he said.

"We put on this mask, and it's a dangerous mask to put on," he said, referring to students who pretend there's nothing wrong. He said he did many of the same things before he got treatment for his depression.

Mackie's father, Tom Mackie, also spoke at the public presentation, explaining that 50 percent of suicides are a result of untreated depression, and that anyone who thinks they may be depressed should stick with medication long enough for it to take effect. In the case of anti-depression medicines, that may be many months.

"The mind is a giant chemistry experiment," he said, explaining that mental illness is a result of a measurable chemical imbalance.

Bryce Mackie said that even though he has come to understand his illness and has a better control of it than ever before, he still has bad days. The most important thing for teens to remember, he said, is to "please get help."