Seattle, suicide hotspot?

Seattle myth: Seattle has the highest suicide rate in the U.S. 

Not true. This high suicide rate is commonly blamed on the rain, and S.A.D. (seasonal affective disorder), as well as serotonin deficiencies--caused by lack of sunlight--that lead to depression. In fact, Seattle falls in the bottom half of the top 50 cities. On the other hand, the Aurora Bridge is the second most popular place to commit suicide in the U.S. (behind the Golden Gate Bridge). 

The top cities for suicide per capita (including many sunny and warm places):

1 Las Vegas, NV
2 Colorado Springs, CO
3 Tucson, AZ
4 Sacramento, CA
5 Albuquerque, NM
6 Mesa, AZ
7 Miami, FL
8 Denver, CO
9 Jacksonville, FL
10 Pittsburgh, PA
10 Wichita, KS
12 Portland, OR
13 Fresno, CA
14 Phoenix, AZ
15 Tulsa, OK
16 Milwaukee, WI
17 Oklahoma City, OK
18 Atlanta, GA
19 Austin, TX
20 Cincinnati, OH
21 Charlotte, NC
22 St. Louis, MO
23 Indianapolis, IN
24 Louisville/Jefferson Co., KY
24 Virginia Beach,VA
26 Nashville-Davidson,TN
27 Cleveland, OH
28 Seattle, WA
29 Kansas City, MO
30 Houston, TX
31 San Francisco, CA
32 Fort Worth, TX
32 Honolulu, HI
34 Columbus, OH
35 Philadelphia, PA
36 Omaha, NB
37 San Diego, CA
38 Dallas, TX
39 San Antonio, TX
40 Arlington, TX
41 Long Beach, CA
42 San Jose, CA
43 New Orleans, LA
44 Minneapolis, MN
45 Memphis,TN
46 Oakland, CA
47 El Paso, TX
48 Los Angeles, CA
49 Chicago, IL
50 Detroit, MI
51 New York City, NY
52 Baltimore, MD
52 Washington, DC
54 Boston, MA

[source city-data.com]

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We can do better: Misconceptions about suicide (from SAVE - Suicide Awareness Voices of Education)

By Jack Brummet, Mental Health Ed.

I was very sad to hear about the death of Robin Williams, most likely by his own hand. 

Most people who commit suicide don't want to die—"they just want to stop hurting." Talking openly about suicidal thoughts and feelings can save a life. It's hard, but don 't be afraid to speak up if you despair. And please speak up if someone you know or love is hurting.

Common Misconceptions about Suicide

FALSE: People who talk about suicide won't really do it. 

Almost everyone who commits or attempts suicide has given some clue or warning. Do not ignore suicide threats. Statements like "you'll be sorry when I'm dead," "I can't see any way out," — no matter how casually or jokingly said may indicate serious suicidal feelings.

FALSE: Anyone who tries to kill him/herself must be crazy. 

Most suicidal people are not psychotic or insane. They must be upset, grief-stricken, depressed or despairing, but extreme distress and emotional pain are not necessarily signs of mental illness.

FALSE: If a person is determined to kill him/herself, nothing is going to stop them. 

Even the most severely depressed person has mixed feelings about death, wavering until the very last moment between wanting to live and wanting to die. Most suicidal people do not want death; they want the pain to stop. The impulse to end it all, however overpowering, does not last forever.

FALSE: People who commit suicide are people who were unwilling to seek help. 

Studies of suicide victims have shown that more than half had sought medical help in the six months prior to their deaths.

FALSE: Talking about suicide may give someone the idea. 

You don't give a suicidal person morbid ideas by talking about suicide. The opposite is true — bringing up the subject of suicide and discussing it openly is one of the most helpful things you can do.

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Muhammad Ali talks a suicidal man down from the edge

By Jack Brummet, Heroes Ed.

I've posted a lot of photos of my heroes over the years on All This Is That, including dozens of Muhammad Ali.  But this one. . .wow.  What is more heroic than talking a potential suicide back from the edge?  This is the best picture I could find. You can also see a brief news clip of Walter Cronkite reporting the story below:

 

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Seattle's Aurora Bridge, fenced at last

By Jack Brummet, Seattle Metro Editor & Mona Goldwater, Psychology Correspondent

A week ago today, Wash. Department of Transportation crews finished the nine foot safety barriers on the sides of the 167-foot high cantilever/truss Aurora Bridge (a/k/a The George Washington Memorial Bridge)that carries Highway 99 (formerly known as The Pacific Highway) across the Ship Canal.  Hallelujah!  We drove by and admired the work this weekend. 

The Aurora Bridge's height and easy pedestrian access have long made it a popular location for suicide jumpers.  In fact, the first person to leap to their death from the bridge did so while it was still under construction, in 1932.  It took us until 2006 to install six emergency phones and 18 signs to encourage people to seek help instead of jumping.  People even put up home-made stickers that asked people not to jump and call a suicide hotline instead.  Someone even posted their own number "call me!  I care about YOU!"

These fences are a beautiful thing, when you consider their potential.  If only a couple of people turn away a year, it is money well spent.  The Aurora Bridge is the No. 2 bridge for suicides in North America.  It was No. 3 until Toronto fenced their bridge. In fact, since they put up that fence, there have been no suicides.  This has happened at every bridge where they have installed fences.  That is goodness.  One week in 2009, three people jumped from the bridge, two of them "successfully." True, you will not stop someone determined to end themselves, but you will stop impulse jumpers and people who might reconsider.  One statistic we heard recently said that of all the people who came close to jumping, but turned back, 94% don't ever come close again.  If these fences buy the despondent two minutes to think, then, in our booklet, that's five million dollars well spent.   Seeing these fences go up makes our hearts sing.

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Similarities between the Austin plane bomber and the Tea Party Movement

 

By Pablo Fanque

All This Is That National Affairs Editor

It's hard to swallow the hand-wringing over Andrew Joseph Stack (another triple-name psycho) and whatever mental illness led him to fly his Piper Cub into a building and murder at least one (and possibly more) people. It's heartbreaking when anyone commits suicide, but Stack's disjointed, rambling diatribe (you can't really call it a manifesto) would have never made these pages on The Smoking Gun, or the headlines of most 'papers, if he had merely committed suicide. "I have had all I can stand," he wrote. He then decided to make a splash by killing some innocent people, although no one in that building probably had anything to do with his woes.

He wrote and posted a deranged and muddy screed, lit his house on fire, and flew his plane into an Austin building that housed the IRS, who went after Stack for not filing tax returns or paying taxes he owed. He owned a house, he owned an airplane, he played bass in a rock band. He doesn't exactly sound like he had been ground down into poverty.

He, earlier, ran two of his businesses into the ground. In 1985, he incorporated Prowess Engineering Inc. in Corona CA. Its business license was suspended by California two years later. He started Software Systems Service Corp. in Lincoln, CA in 1995 and that entity was suspended in 2001. Stack listed himself as chief executive officer of both companies. He then moved to Austin to save them from themselves (according to his screed) with his development/programming prowess.

His web site was removed by its host this afternoon and in its place his ISP posted the following:

"This web site has been taken offline due to the sensitive nature of the events that transpired in Texas this morning and in compliance with a request from the FBI."

His rant, at various points, attacks the rich, the Catholic Church, Austin--one of the great hotbeds of art, food, music, technology, and film in the world), and the American People, or as he pegged us, "zombies." It is full of half-baked conspiracies against him, and builds up to him finally striking a blow against tyranny.




What strikes me most about his rants are the themes and keynotes--very similar to those of the Tea Party people--similar muddy logic, paranoia, disenfranchisement, pent-up rage, and a nearly identical sense of victimization. No doubt some of the Tea Bagger's twisted rhetoric resonated with Andrew Joseph Stack.

Had Stack been a Moslem/Muslim that flew into the building, we would now witness a national debate on The President's policies and about our "war on terror." That was not the case, and we now face up to the grim fact that, as Pogo once said, "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us."
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Suicide, and getting through

I found out this morning, on returning to work after our blissfully long Christmas vacation, that a long-time co-worker had taken his life. He shot himself in his car.

I liked him. He was one person I could always trust when I asked design questions, and who would patiently walk me through (with some good-natured sighing about my ignorance) whatever question I posed. Even if he was working 18 hours a day, he would take the time to answer my questions and school me. He was intense, cranky, insistent, and smart as a whip (like all great designers). He's gone.

Between the time I was about 25 and 30, two friends, Jannah Hill and Peter Whitten, and my brother-in-law Colin Curran, took their own lives. I thought (no, hoped) those days were behind me (and there isn't much I wish to be already behind me). The death of my friend, reopens those old thoughts and regrets,. Could I have sensed something, or said anything if I had sensed something? Shouldn't I have known? Have I wasted my life doing what I am doing? Don't people who work side by side, in the end, have a sacred, really, a familial, responsibility for each other? Do we miss the signs, or do they carefully cover their tracks when they decide to leave this life?

When I was 17-20, I worked on a crisis hotline, and some calls came from people both toying with, and seriously contemplating, suicide. I know I changed at least one person's mind (or at least got them to cool off for a few days), and that when I checked a few years later, they were still among us. There were others where I never knew what finally happened. I don't think I had a gift or anything...just an overwhelming belief that you never know what tomorrow brings and that if you put off the moment, you just may see your way through. The death of my friend/co-worker brings that all back. . .I wonder if it isn't time to get back in?

In this country, thirty thousand people a year end their own lives. Last summer, we went to NYC where a lot of the family participated in the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention's "out of the darkness" walk, where thousand of people marched overnight to raise money (millions!) for research and prevention. This year's walk will be in NYC and Seattle (New York: June 7-8, 2008/Seattle: June 21-22, 2008.

Man, if you can pull even one person through to the next day, you never know! You don't know if he had planned this for years or if it was a bad moment, or if the turning point (and the way back) was just around the corner! Tomorrow, you could get it all back or turn the corner on the darkness.

I send my prayers and good vibrations to his family and friends that they can emerge from this whole, or mostly intact. And to Dream, "may the four winds blow you safely home."

I wrote this poem after my brother-in-law Colin took his life in 1983, and it kind of applies, still.


The Absence of Footprints

1.
We're not trilliums or daffodils
That spring back up
After a nap in the dirt.

2.
You told me you wanted
To make the crossing
Over to Cold Island
And I could never believe you.

It wasn't the karmic stain
That bothered me,
But the unfathomable fact
You didn't want to be here;
That all this wasn't enough.

All this is that.
And it wasn't enough.

3.
You stare into the ditch
You spent years unloading.

You are afraid to climb in
And stop,

To take something
That isn't working,
and make it not work forever.

4.
It's
so
quiet
you
hear
dust
motes
six
feet
up
bump
in
shafts
of
sunlight.
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Owen Wilson attempts suicide/our ever-present and none too welcome companion in life

In my life I've had two friends and a brother-in-law commit suicide. In the first quarter of my life, I worked on a suicide hotline and have since thought about the act itself a great deal. Judas, Hitler, Dan White, and a few others, I could understand. But most often I am shocked. I was stunned to hear that Owen Wilson attempted suicide this weekend. And I wish him and his family the best, and hope he is able to cure or salve whatever drove him to such a desperate act. Of course, he doesn't fit the profile we expect. He's on top of his career, and always seemed happy. Little do we know what lurks in his heart, or what demons Mr. Wilson was battling.

The National Enquirer reported details on the attempted suicide today. Yeah,. I know...the Enquirer. . .but this story appears real, no matter who first published it. The Enquirer and Star have this story exclusive for the time being, although it is naturally being reported all over the web and in the blogs.

The United Press also reported the story, although it is not clear what they used for corroboration (if anything).

A couple of poems on suicide have appeared on All This Is That:

Poem: You Rehearse Dying
poem: Not Past Tense Yet
Poem: The Absence of Footprints
Poem: Your Wooden Leg
Poem: The Bucket
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