Suicide Rate Rises in Rhode Island (Again) -- Rhode Island Department of Health Needs an Overhaul

When I talk about "shameful" and "pathetic" in the context of suicide, I am NOT shaming the victim of suicide in the least. They are a tragic and much overlooked loss to humanity and society. What's shameful and pathetic are those institutions entrusted to treat the mentally ill, who do so in ways that are substandard, careless, reckless, and even abusive.

From the Providence Journal (Jan. 31, 2020):

A federal report released Thursday on life expectancy and mortality documented progress in reducing deaths by drug overdose, but the news on suicide was disheartening, as it has been for years.Deaths by suicide continue to rise, with an increase nationally from 47,173 in 2017 to 48,344 in 2018, the latest year for which full data are finalized.
Those numbers documenting an unrelenting crisis, contained in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “Mortality in the United States: 2018” report, brought renewed attention in Rhode Island, where the suicide trend has also been upward for two decades.
Suicide also was brought into sharp focus locally with the Christmas Day deaths in Boston of Erin Pascal and her two young children. Pascal was a reporting intern at The Journal from 2001 to 2003.
“We need to get help to people with behavioral health issues quickly, and in a way that is affirming, compassionate, consistent, and effective, in the same way that we do for physical health conditions,” state Health Department director Dr. Nicole Alexander Scott told The Journal. “We must do everything we can to lift people up, and let them know that they matter, and that they are loved.”

Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott, R.I. Department of Health Director

Now I'm not going to make hay of the Erin Pascal tragedy in Boston, which was a widely-publicized murder-suicide. But my sense is that someone as educated as she was -- a Brown graduate -- had been in mental health treatment. But what often happens?

Preventive care needs to be improved, Denise Panichas, executive director of The Samaritans of Rhode Island, said on Thursday. Too often, she told The Journal, people at risk don’t receive help — or have become frustrated by what she described as an inefficient and cumbersome health-care system.
“Whatever numbers you can come up with will not count those who have been in treatment before and refuse care because they don’t believe it works,” Panichas said. Nor do such numbers “count those people who give up because the bureaucracy is so huge, dauntingly difficult to navigate, and exhausting that continuity of care seems impossible. We must do better streamlining care and working together across the spectrum of all providers.”

The fact is this: I have sent Dr. Alexander-Scott's Department of Health detailed complaints about several inept, unethical, incompetent, and unstable mental health so-called professionals here in Rhode Island. She even personally wrote back in response to one complaint. What happened? What did she do about it? Other than appointing one of the relatives of the therapists I complained about to one of the licensing boards, NOTHING. Otherwise: These mental health advocates are way off base, speaking mostly about "bureaucracy" and the inaccessibility of care, and not the poor performance and unprofessionalism of too many mental health providers, who seem to be held beyond all question about their performance and criticism. When their judgements are prejudiced by stigma and too much subjectivity, they often blow it, either with the basic diagnosis, or simply relating to the patient.    

The article goes on:

Rhode Island Department of Health statistics confirm the overall upward — although not straight-line — trend here over the last two decades. The state saw 96 deaths by suicide in 1999, 75 the next year, 88 in 2001, and 71 in 2005. That rose to 129 deaths in 2010, dropped to 101 the following year, and then hit a high for the period of 132 in 2013. The latest available figure was for 2017, when the state recorded 129 deaths by suicide, up three form the prior year.
The statistics for 2018 will not be finalized until later this year, according to the Health Department.
Suicide affects certain age groups more severely than others. In 2017, according to the Health Department, suicide was the fourth-leading cause of death for people age 10 to 14; and the second-leading cause of death for people 15 to 24 and people 25 to 34. It is the third-leading case in the 45-to-54 age group, and eighth for the 55-to-64 age group.

 And a mental hospital official is quoted as stating:

"The Mental Health America 2020 report indicates that Rhode Island has higher rates of adults with serious thoughts of suicide than many other states,” with the state ranking 40th out of 51 states including the District of Columbia, Diane Block, director of quality and patient experience at Butler Hospital, told The Journal. “To reduce deaths from suicide we have to be willing to talk openly and honestly about thoughts of suicide and to take action to mitigate suicide risk when a person endorses these thoughts.”

And let's be willing to talk openly about the FAILURES of mental health providers and those who are supposed to hold them accountable. 

FOLLOW-UP NOTE: Many believe that unemployment is behind much of the suicide rate. While loss of a job is no doubt a major life stressor and driver behind too many suicides, something stands out in the statistics for Rhode Island. The years 1999, 2000, as well as 2005 were very strong economically, especially by Rhode Island standards -- and unemployment was low. Perhaps correspondingly, the numbers of suicides were relatively low. Then suicides began to rise precipitously by 2010, when the economy was poor (and the job market especially bad in R.I.). But the heightened suicide trend continued into 2017 -- 129 deaths, 58 more deaths compared to 2005. The economy by 2017 was considered strong, the unemployment rate dropping to a 30 year low. Does work stress combined with financial difficulties, all while steadily having a job, factor into the equation?