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Alaska health officials worried about rash of suicides
The Anchorage Daily News
By MARTHA BELLISLE and S.J. KOMARNITSKY, Anchorage Daily News
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (March 16, 2001 5:22 p.m. EST) - Suicide has long been a
serious problem across Alaska, with the state's suicide rate about double the
national level for the past decade. But recently health officials have found
even greater reason to worry.
"But in the last two to three years, clusters of suicides have appeared in
certain areas," said Susan Soule, a state official who oversees alcoholism
and drug abuse services in rural Alaska, where the rates are especially high.
she said. The Mat-Su area north of Anchorage and the six villages of the
Yukon-Koyukuk region of the western Interior have been hit hardest, she said,
with dramatic jumps in the numbers of young people killing themselves.
Suicide attempts in those areas are increasing as well, she and other people
said.
"Suicide is infectious," said Diana Weber, director of the Yukon-Koyukuk
Mental Health Center in Galena, one of the six villages suffering a virtual
epidemic of suicides. "The more it happens, the more it becomes a normal way
to solve a problem."
In recent village meetings, when elementary-age children were asked whether
they ever thought of suicide, many hands went up, she said.
"We don't know when the epidemic ends," she said.
About 1,700 people live in the region. Last year, of the 18 deaths in the
villages, six were suicides and all of the suicides were alcohol related, she
said.
"And it seems to be escalating," she said. Between October 2000 and last
month, three people in the region killed themselves.
In one village of about 250 people, which state officials would not name, two
young people killed themselves in fall 1999, three killed themselves in 2000,
and one, a 15-year-old boy, shot himself earlier this year, according to the
state health department.
This year alone, mental health workers have responded to 17 suicide attempts
in the region.
"The impact? Words can't express," Weber said of these close communities.
"People have traveled from one funeral to another. They're walking around
numb. For such a small area, this is pretty dreadful."
