Ive been making arguments on suicide to others claiming its something it needs to be addressed, the following writing debates about that topic, more specifically in Idaho and high suicide states. I obtained several of these statistics through Psychology academic journals and newspaper articles, this doesnt go full credit to me.
Suicide is the third leading cause of death among individuals in the United States from ten to nineteen and is rising more as the years pass. One fifth of teens in today’s society have at least thought of committing suicide and suicide rates in the United States are twice as high than other industrialized countries such as China, Australia and Japan. While hitting closer to home suicide rates in Idaho are and have been ranked within the top ten highest in the nation and is advancing by 14% each year. With that in view for it to be an epidemic what factors motivate individuals in Idaho to do this? What can we do about it? Does it have to due with budget cuts that people see more and more each day, or could it be some other unseen factors at work? Before we can start drawing conclusions, the first thing is to figure out what the problem is at its roots.
Statistics on suicide are the people who actually complete the act, but what about those who don’t succeed or haven’t done the act yet? Those people are in just as much pain as the ones who actually go through it mentally and sometimes physically. Those who have an unsuccessful suicide attempt can just as well live with the scars or even be disabled the rest of their lives due to the severity of the attempt. What about those who aren’t in the main statistics? The National Institute of Mental Health states that for every successful attempt there are eleven unsuccessful ones. With that in view should we consider those who are in physical or mental pain part of the statistics? What about those who haven’t done the attempt but have the pain such as depressive mental disorders or even non-suicidal self-injury or NSSI? The strongest predictor of a future suicide attempt in individuals is in fact NSSI in itself.
Up to 14% of all adolescents deliberately injure themselves. You might be thinking that it doesn’t sound like much but putting it in real numbers there are approximately 6 billion people in the world and 1/5th of the population are adolescents. 168 million adolescents make up that 14% of individuals who intentionally hurt themselves and the average deaths worldwide per year is around 57 million. Putting the percentage of NCCI in full numbers makes it seem like it’s a serious problem but why do people do it? Psychiatrists Paul Wilkinson and Ian Goodyer state that it is to relieve stress, sadness and guilt because they have no other proper ways to cope with everyday life. The various ways to use NCCI is cutting, burning, stabbing, hitting or various other ways that can induce bleeding or bruising. Why aren’t any of these people part of any statistic? This is obviously a problem that needs to be addressed but there are others that tend to be neglected.
Around 31% of people worldwide have a form of a depressive disorder! It is very common to know one of these people personally but do you know how they feel? It is shown that out of all these individuals with depression 85% of them there condition is moderate to serious by affecting the individual’s everyday life. How might they be affected? It is shown that depressed people find it difficult to concentrate, feel worthless or anxious many even find it hard just to get out of bed. Depression is the leading cause of suicide and what do people do about it? People with depression rarely see to have counseling let alone even having someone notice their condition. So what factors put Idaho in such a chokehold that people are forced into depression, NSSI and suicide? Yet again I went to the root of the problem and I have found four factors; budget cuts, our location, gun laws and substance abuse.
The big problem in Idaho—also among other states— are budget cuts. If you cut Schools and higher education today, then you will run the risk of a less educated, less competitive work force. If you cut rehabilitation programs you will run the risk of expanding the prison population tomorrow and it’s the same thing for mental health. As of 2010, Idaho’s budget committee took $2.4 million from mental health services even when the State Planning Council in Mental Health warned that it would lead to more suicides. Since 2008 funding for mental health has dropped from $40 million to $32 million this year. Resulting, the death toll of suicides rose up 19%— fatalities at 300— as of 2009 and is rising 5% each year. But Idaho has always lacked health services. Idaho doesn’t even have a suicide hotline of its own. Idaho relies on an office in Oregon who takes all our calls, I find that very unsatisfactory.
Idaho takes a great deal of isolation. Since towns are small and wide spread throughout the state physical isolation is added to mental. How many opportunities does a person who lives hundreds of miles away from the nearest town with a psychiatrist have? Rarely do people with depression in Idaho seek for help due to inconvenience and lack of money. Along with social isolation studies show that further north you live, the more likely you will have depression and commit suicide due to the lack of sun and climate. Since it is clearly evident that the higher north you are makes it more likely to be vulnerable to mental disorders, shouldn't, mental health coverage be higher as you head up the continents? It doesn’t seem quite so.
Gun laws are hardly restrictive in Idaho but when you look at most of the deaths by suicide, 65% of them involve a gun. I went further to figure out what is going on and in 1997 gun suicide cases in the United States was 1,400 while the next highest was Canada at 153. Gun suicides are remarkably high in the United States. To create a further problem I looked at Child Access Prevention laws in the United States in which state that if you own a gun, by law you must store guns where others—mostly children—cannot find them. Idaho is one of the few states that do not have this law furthering suicides of adolescents from ten to nineteen. I’m not saying that guns need to be more restricted in Idaho but more simply out of the reach of children.
Another big problem in Idaho is substance abuse. In a short period of time of 2001 northern Idaho was known as the meth capitol of the world. In my opinion that isn’t a title that I’m proud to have. Statistics show that suicide is done half of the time while under the influence of alcohol or drugs and I believe it. It is fairly well known that alcohol and certain illegal drugs are depressants in which make you even more depressed if you were depressed in the first place. They make your mind unclear and your actions very questionable and all in all if your thinking of committing suicide substance abuse will only make a thought come true.
When everything is said and done I think it is very clear on what we are supposed to do to help the escalating suicides in Idaho. Find more funding for mental health, find support groups that will help survivors and or look out for those who soon will. Along with that have a few laws keeping guns away from children and crack down more on the substance abuse that is running free in our state. Though this may seem simple I would imagine it would be very hard, money doesn’t grow on trees. But when the positive is presented in front of you how can you not want to stop an epidemic from happening?
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