Staff writer
Suicide, the ninth-leading cause of death in the nation, is a preventable epidemic.
In Kansas, it’s the 10th-leading cause of death. COVID-19 outranks it.
It’s not a new epidemic, nor is it one that’s always easy to see.
According to Cathy Martin, licensed social worker at Senior Solutions inside St. Luke Hospital in Marion, all clients are screened for suicidal thoughts when they enter services.
“We make sure they are safe,” she said.
If someone is in a suicidal crisis, counselors escort him or her upstairs to the emergency department.
“We’d rather have them mad at us than dead,” she said.
Martha Wiens, clinical social worker at Pathlight Alliance Counseling in Hillsboro, said signs of distress can be recognized and lead to successful intervention.
“If there is something in the environment which causes you to stop, pay attention and be a stabilizing factor in someone’s life,” Wiens said. “It is time to be ready.”
Awareness of the signs of suicide is key to stepping forward into a helping role. The more confident you are in recognizing the signs, the more likely you will follow through rather than avoid or minimize the situation as just talk, she said.
Senior Solutions might even have law enforcement check on the client at home.
“We do monthly testing of all our clients,” she said. “If we have a high score — high risk for suicide — we do a protocol.”
The protocol includes going over “protective factors.”
Protective factors may include religious beliefs against suicide, having a pet in the home, having access to a social support network, and the like.
“We also evaluate how many risk factors they have,” she said.
Risk factors could include such things as keeping guns in the house, being socially withdrawn, and having suffered a lot of trauma.
She used to work with children. Then she began working with adults and started having to talk about suicide.
“A lot of times, they think they don’t have anybody they can talk to,” she said. “When someone asks, they know they have someone they can talk to.”
During a recent continuing education course, she heard a speech by John Kevin Hines, who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in 2000. His attempt to commit suicide failed, but his road to physical recovery was long.
Hines told the group that as he walked along the bridge’s sidewalk, he passed many people, but not one of them asked whether he needed help.
If one had, it would have made him stop, she said. But even as he climbed onto the rail of the bridge to jump, no one asked whether he needed help.
He later co-founded the Kevin and Margaret Hines Foundation, which advocates for mental health education and suicide prevention.
According to Kansas Department of Health and Environment, 590 Kansans committed suicide in 2022, the most recent year for which data are available. That amounted to 20.5 suicides per 100,000 population.
Of them, 483 were male and 107 were female. White, non-Hispanic people were by far the largest group.
Suicide rates increased approximately 36% between 2000 and 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Suicide was responsible for 49,476 deaths in 2022, which is about one death every 11 minutes.
The number of people who think about or attempt suicide is even higher. In 2022, an estimated 13.2 million adults seriously thought about suicide, 3.8 million planned a suicide attempt, and 1.6 million attempted suicide, CDC reports.
KDHE reports a 51.4% increase in suicides between 2011 and 2022.
In 2022, suicide was the second leading cause of death for people ages 10 to 14 and 25 to 34.
Suicide and suicide attempts cause serious emotional, physical, and economic impacts.
People who attempt suicide and survive may experience serious injuries that can have long-term effects on their health. They may also experience depression and other mental health concerns.
When someone commits suicide, he or she is not the only person affected. Friends, loved ones, co-workers, and the community itself are affected.
Surviving relatives and friends may experience prolonged grief, shock, anger, guilt, symptoms of depression or anxiety, and even thoughts of suicide themselves.
Nationally in 2022, 49,430 people age 12 and older committed suicide. For each suicide death, 11 people were treated in emergency departments for self-harm, 52 self-reported suicide attempts in the past year, and 336 said they seriously considered suicide during the past year.