Suicide prevention a cause we can all come to embrace

Rachel Thompson/News-Register file photo

In the face of troubling social issues, our first instinct has traditionally been to simply keep them out of the public eye, thus avoiding the messy necessity of addressing them. When that fails, our fallback has typically been to stigmatize, shame and shun victims, enforcing a cone of silence that way.

But time after time, we’ve ended up having to engage such issues head-on to make any meaningful progress. And so it is with suicide, the most irrevocable act of wrongful desperation any human being can take.

The tide began to turn for forces on the suicide prevention front about 10 years ago. A consensus began to emerge for broad and forceful public engagement, transforming, as one observer put it, “a whole-of-government approach to a whole-of-society approach.”

The reset was driven, more than anything, by numbers that remained stubbornly and remarkably high. To wit:

-- Suicide is a global scourge, claiming more than 700,000 lives annually. That amounts to more than 2,000 a day or one every 45 seconds.

-- In the U.S., it stands second as a cause of death in the age 10-24 range and first in the age 13-14 subset. It ranks in the top 10 overall, claiming almost 50,000 victims annually, and the rate rose more than one-third between 2000 and 2018.

-- The U.S. rate exceeds the global rate, and the local, state and regional rates exceed the national rate. So we are by no means exempt.

-- The young, old, male and incarcerated are particularly prone, along with military veterans. But anyone can fall victim, and often with an outward warning that even close family members could detect.

-- A trio of suicides among Mac High students over a 10-month span served to drive suicide prevention to the forefront locally last year. We just marked the first anniversary of the most recent of those deaths — that of Mayor Kim Morris’ 15-year-old granddaughter Mikalynn — serving as a poignant reminder.

On the international front, the World Health Organization, an arm of the United Nations, has been taking the lead.

WHO has a goal of reducing death by suicide one-third by 2030. Only 22 nations had formal suicide prevention policies in place in 2014, but thanks to WHO, more than twice that many do today.

The U.S., long a global leader, adopted a new national suicide prevention strategy last year. The Department of Health and Human Services termed it “a bold new 10-year, comprehensive whole-of-society approach to suicide prevention that provides concrete recommendations.”

The federal action plan stresses early identification and support for at-risk individuals, extension of crisis intervention and treatment services, promotion of long-term recovery post-crisis and support for survivors of suicide loss. In keeping with the evolving thinking in the field, it aims to enlist a broad-based coalition of health care agencies, community nonprofits and local school and governmental units to collaborate in the effort.

Here at home, Mikalynn’s death prompted the Morris family to establish a scholarship fund and LoveLikeMikalynn suicide prevention advocacy organization in her memory. It also prompted Rep. Lucetta Elmer to shepherd a bill through the Legislature declaring Oct. 9 Youth Suicide Awareness Day in Oregon.

As a result, Elmer said, “I hope the conversation about suicide is elevated.” She went on to advocate a “more proactive approach” serving to “bring the issue into the light.”

In keeping with that, LoveLikeMikalynn hosted a local Out of Darkness sunrise vigil on this first Oct. 9 anniversary.

There are avenues for just about anyone to join in the cause. Perhaps the most concrete of them is taking one of three free suicide prevention training programs offered free to all by Yamhill County Public Health.

One is aimed at identifying people in distress caused by mental health or substance abuse issues, one at helping identify and address early warning signs of suicidal intent, and one at helping friends and family cope with the loss in the wake of a suicide.

There are few if any acts sending more damaging tremors coursing through families and communities than the suicide of a loved one. If nothing else brings us together, trying to reduce the incidence of such heart-rending should certainly do so.