COLUMBUS – In the face of rising suicide rates in Ohio and across the nation, mental health advocates are encouraging people to ask friends and loved ones a very difficult question:
Are you thinking about suicide?
“And for a lot of people, that’s really scary, especially if they are really close to this person because they’re anxious that this person might say ‘yes,’” Austin Lucas, of the Ohio Suicide Prevention Foundation, said. “However, having that conversation might be enough to save their life.”
National Suicide Prevention Week is Sept. 8-14
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-723-8255
Ohio’s suicide rate rose nearly 24 percent between 2008 and 2017 and an OSU study showed suicide rates nationwide jumped 41 percent between 1999 and 2016.
Ohio has more than 50 suicide-prevention organizations available to assist folks in every county. Lucas says there also are roughly 20 LOSS teams who provide support to suicide survivors.
“It’s called ‘postvention,’” he said. “What happens after a suicide, caring for those folks that are left behind because folks that have lost a loved one to suicide themselves are at a higher risk because of that experience.”
In 2015, three-fourths of the Ohioans who took their own lives were males, Lucas said.
Suicide rates were highest in less-populous counties and in areas where people have lower incomes and fewer resources, according to researchers at The Ohio State University whose study appeared online in the journal JAMA Network Open.
In their county-by-county national breakdown of the suicide toll among adults, they found the rates increased from a median of 15 per 100,000 county residents in the first part of the study to 21.2 per 100,000 in the last three years.
From 2014 through 2016, suicide rates were 17.6 per 100,000 in large metropolitan counties compared with 22 per 100,000 in rural counties.