48,183.
That’s how many people died by suicide in 2021, the latest year for which we have data.
And if that weren’t enough to disgust someone, what irks me the most is knowing that circa 2005 when I was in the early thick of my suicide prevention work, we lost somewhere around 32,000 people to suicide. In New Mexico in those years, the number hovered around 365 because we used to say in workshops that it was approximately one a day. By 2020, that number had swelled to something like 516.
It’s been a sad, steady rise that shouldn’t be happening, especially given all the effort we have put into suicide prevention.
Sunday I did my first talk in quite some time on suicide (in person, too!). Pre-pandemic, most of my work had been focused on grief and I can’t remember too many times where it was solely suicide prevention related. That meant I found myself reflecting on the nearly 30 years (how have so many years gone by?) since my sister Denise died by suicide and the work I have done worldwide in that time.
One could say we’re more open about suicide, about mental health issues, that we do put more funding into help for people and for prevention. Maybe the stigma is less, but that also means people aren’t as afraid to kill themselves because there isn’t such a stigma. They seem to remain afraid to seek help, but perhaps not as afraid to end their lives. They don’t see a stigma for their family now so much as they feel relief that the perceived notion that they are a burden would cease to exist with their death.
And yet we still don’t have enough hospital beds for people, to give them the time to find the right medication, before being sent back into a world they fear. I have watched countless programs start up here in New Mexico– getting gobs of funding– and doing nothing in the end but fizzling out.
We now have an easy number to remember, 988, to reach out for help, yet how many people know about it?
We need to train people and then inoculate them of sorts so their skills asking a person if they are suicidal don’t diminish. We need to help everyone know where they can reach out to if they are worried about someone.
And in just a few short months we’ll be heading into March, the month where typicalyl the most people end their lives. While most of us find great joy in spring, for a depressed person, new life is hard to swallow.
Aren’t we ever going to learn?