From 'A Haunted Girl' to an Undaunted Girl

Consider this a public service announcement about a public service announcement.

I’m proud as heck to announce that my daughter, Naomi Sacks, is the face of a new Congressional PSA on teenage mental health that is airing across the country and that debuted today. This all comes out of the advocacy that she has been doing (along with artist Marco Lorenzana and I) with our creator-owned comic saga, A HAUNTED GIRL.

Produced by the National Broadcasting Association, the 30-second spots feature different Representatives and Senators from both sides of the aisle, as this seems to be one of the few issues that is nonpartisan.

(Except for the massive budget cuts and lack of respect for medicine from this regime, but I try to avoid getting too political in this newsletter.)

This book continues to be special.

Here’s one of the PSAs, with Senator Alejandro Padilla of California:

If the Youtube link doesn’t work for you in the email newsletter, try this link: 


For those of you who haven’t heard the story behind the story of A HAUNTED GIRL, the supernatural YA horror tale is very much grounded in our family’s real, lived experience. In Naomi’s real, lived experience. 

In the Spring of 2019, we hospitalized my daughter, then a high-school freshman, in the pediatric psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital in New York City. She was suicidal and diagnosed with major depression and anxiety, and all of our lives would drastically change. In those early day of that first of three hospitalizations, I spent every day working on my laptop in the hospital cafeteria so I wouldn’t miss any visiting hours, typing up a Star Wars script for Marvel. But I was horribly distracted.

I realized that I wanted to write a comic book that would inspire my daughter to live. To inspire other teens going through similar struggles to live. To seek help. To feel seen.

I wrote down a single line in my reporter’s notebook: “The fate of all life on Earth rests with a girl who doesn’t know if she wants to live.” I didn’t really have an idea of where the plot would go from there. 

Over the months and years that followed, my artistic collaborator, Marco, and I started building a story about a teenage girl named Cleo, who was struggling to reintegrate back into school after a hospitalization following a suicide attempt when she discovers that she’s the only person who can save everyone she loves from a supernatural apocalypse.

During that time, my daughter was on her own real-life hero’s journey. She had been making progress through therapy, prescription medication, and personal growth. One of those lightbulbs flashed over my head: What if Naomi joined Marco and I to tell this story, lending it an authenticity that we couldn’t have managed on our own.

Naomi took a leap of faith. I warned her that if she co-wrote the story with me, her personal psychological history would be the first thing that popped up when a future employer did a web search about her. She had to believe in the mission down to the marrow of her bones. She had to believe that owning her own story and controlling how it went out in the world was its own power.

Her addition helped us land a deal with Syzygy Publishing, an imprint of Image Comics. This would never have seen the light of day if Syzygy publisher Chris Ryall didn’t take his own leap of faith tackling material that went deep on some uncomfortable topics, 

The result, A HAUNTED GIRL, with added magic from colorist Andres Mossa and letterer JAME, has been more amazing than I could have ever hoped. We launched the first issue of the four-issue series in October 2023, and the trade paperback hit stores in June 2024. Teaming up with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the American Psychiatric Association, those amazing organizations provided us with sensitivity reading (along with my friend, Diana Crandall Emery) and resource guides in the back.

Our comic book received nationwide media coverage from the likes of CBS News, NPR, CBC Radio, Mashable, and The Beat. Scholastic News did a big profile on Naomi. And somehow we got the same six-page spread treatment in People Magazine that Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds did a week earlier. (Check out more about A HAUNTED GIRL in that People article.) 

In May, Naomi and I were honored with the AFSP’s Lifesaver Awards at the organization’s annual gala for our work on A HAUNTED GIRL. I had to buy a tuxedo and everything!

Best of all, there has been a steady stream of readers approaching us at various conventions and comic store signings across the country saying how much Cleo’s story – how much Naomi’s story -- resonated with them. They shared their own accounts of suicidal thoughts and hospitalizations, and near misses with tragedy. I was grateful that they were still here to share their experiences with us.

During one store signing, at Third Eye Comics in Annapolis, I was approached by a high school history teacher who told me he bought copies for at risk students in his class. One girl told him that after reading the story, she saw the suicide crisis hotline number in the resource guide at the back of the book and was inspired to call it for help.

I don’t know how many copies of A HAUNTED GIRL will be sold. I don’t know if there will ever be A HAUNTED GIRL movie. But I do know we were there for that student when she need it. And that validates all the leaps of faith.

You get your own copy of A HAUNTED GIRL via one of these stores or platforms.

And now this PSA is out in the world, hopefully drawing more validation to addressing mental health.

This has been a public service announcement from a proud dad.