CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — When a local mom was given a national platform, she didn't only see it as her moment in the spotlight, she saw it as her chance to highlight a subject important to so many across the country.

When it’s not school and homework, time together between 12-year-old Cayden Beaukeman and his mom, Jenny, of Clarksville, Tennessee, includes comic book stores and video game stores. The usual. What’s perhaps not as usual is how people know Cayden’s mom.

She is MMA fighter Jenny Savage.

“I am Tennessee’s only born and raised bare-knuckle boxer female,” Savage smiled. "Makes an interesting career day."

“It’s pretty cool, I like it," Cayden added.

The name "Savage," where’d that come from?

“From the Macho Man Randy Savage!” Savage said. “Randy Savage looked like he is a champion no matter what.”

That’s something Savage is working to pass down to Cayden.

“We come here to train,” said Cayden, speaking just before boxing training with his mom. “I actually kinda like it.”

These are great memories being made with his mom, just like Cayden’s made so many great memories with his dad, Richard Beukeman.

“We used to have this place at my grandma’s house, there was a shed," Cayden remembered. "We’d hang out there and call it the dude cave. We had a connection, a bond.”

Cayden told us those first months of the pandemic were really hard for his dad, when downtowns were quiet and people were isolated in their homes.

“He was depressed," Cayden said. "He's a social person. In 2020, he took his life. I don’t wish for anyone to lose someone that important to them.”

“This pandemic is far more intense than just a virus," said Savage.

For her son, and in memory of her son's father, Savage decided there’s something she needs to do. She’s using interviews she gets from her platform as a fighter to talk about suicide prevention and mental health awareness.

“It should be spoken about a lot more," she said. “I believe fighting is a metaphor for life. Nothing hits us harder than life. It’s about getting back up and continuing. We’ve all at one point in our life felt like we wanted to give up.”

“Yeah, I’m really impressed with my mom," Cayden said.

“We don’t give up around here," said Savage. "We give it all we got. That is what it means to be a fighter, to keep going.”

This story was originally published by Forrest Sanders on newschannel5.com.

As the nation struggles to get a handle on the novel coronavirus pandemic and confronts the issues of police reform and systemic racism, some of the country’s mental health hotlines are seeing a growing number of calls.

“We have seen an exponential increase in the demand for mental health services,” said Kimberly Williams, with Vibrant Emotional Health.

A recent survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that nearly half, approximately 45 percent, of American adults said their mental health has been negatively impacted by the coronavirus.

Yet, mental health hotlines are 10-digits long, can be hard to remember and impede access to immediate help.

“I say the road to seeking mental health services is paved in Swiss cheese,” said Becky Stoll of Centerstone, which focuses on behavioral health services. “And if you don't know how to get yourself around some of those holes, it's tough.”

One solution is to make the National Suicide Prevention hotline a simple, three-digit number: 988.

Late last year, the Federal Communications Commission recommended the number become a national crisis hotline.

“It's just going to be transformative, if we can get it done,” Stoll said.

It’s an effort that’s slowly gaining traction on Capitol Hill because of COVID-19.

A recent letter, signed by a bi-partisan group of Senate and House members, calls for any future coronavirus-related stimulus bill to include funding for 988. Congress could take up another stimulus bill later this summer.

“988 would essentially destigmatize mental health and suicide by promoting easily accessible, help-seeking behavior and ultimately save lives,” Williams said.

This, as lives around the nation continues to be impacted by tumultuous events and a pandemic, with no vaccine available yet.

“We don't know how long it's going to go,” Stoll said. “So, I think we're going to see more and more people, who've not [had] access behavioral health services in the past, need to do that.”

If you are suffering from mental health distress or need counseling, there are several numbers you can call for help.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255 or text ‘HOME’ to 741741

The Disaster Distress Helpline, for calls related to COVID-19: 1-800-985-5990, or text TalkWithUs to 66746

The Veterans Crisis Line, for veterans in crisis: 1-800-273-8255 and press 1 or text 838255.

The TrevorLifeline, for those who identify as part of the LGBTQ community: 1-866-488-7386 or text START to 678-678

For Frontline workers who have emotional or mental health needs: text FRONTLINE to 741741

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Aside from the infectious disease nature of COVID-19, there is also a mental strain the virus is placing on people the world over.

Depression is at the top of the list.

“People took a depression screening to get a sense about how they were being impacted by the pandemic,” said Paul Gionfriddo, president of Mental Health America (MHA).

MHA is a nonprofit that provided mental health screening for more than 2.5 million people all across the country in 2020. Then, they analyzed the data collected.

“We looked at suicidal thinking and self-harm thinking and discovered that 38% of the people who had taken a screening indicated that they had suicidal or self-harm thinking on more than half the days of the week,” Gionfriddo said.

Because of the sheer number of people who participated in the screening, Mental Health America was able to delve into the numbers by location.

Their findings showed the states with the highest number of people with thoughts of suicide were California, Texas, and Florida.

Those findings were not necessarily surprising, considering their large populations.

However, when they looked at the highest percentage of the population contemplating suicide, less populated, more rural states, Alaska, Wyoming, and Alabama jumped to the top spots.

“All the changes, all this destructive disruptions to their lives have had an effect, and we can't overlook this,” Gionfriddo said.

The findings went deeper, to county-by-county levels.

The study found those with the highest percentage of people contemplating suicide included large counties, including Bexar County, Texas, where San Antonio is; Clark County, Nevada, where Las Vegas is; and Riverside County, California, east of Los Angeles.

It also included smaller counties, like Carroll and Whitley counties in Kentucky and Switzerland County, Indiana.

“Even in these small counties that may not have the wherewithal or get the attention, there is a very deep-seated need in even those counties,” said Ann Hartry, a vice president with the pharmaceutical company Lundbeck, which helped fund the independently conducted MHA study. “When I saw these numbers, they are daunting. They are scary. But I think it's a really important view of reality that we gain so that we can actually start to step up and step into it and find even more to do about it.”

That includes using $130 billion in available federal stimulus money, among other funding, for local solutions.

“Then, you have the opportunity in a local area or in a state area to use some of these new block grant dollars that are coming from the federal government,” Gionfriddo said. “We can build a system for everybody, that would serve the needs of everybody, at the earliest possible stages.”

An average of 45,000 people die by suicide in the U.S. every year. If you or someone you know is in need of help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or click here to go to their website.