Where Vermont Is Not So Healthy
In 2006, 13 people were murdered in Vermont, a rate of 2.7 people per hundred-thousand residents, the standard measurement for these matters, far below the national rate (5.6 per hundred-thousand that year) and one of the lowest rates in the country.
Kind of high for Vermont, though, The previous year’s rate had been 2.1 per hundred-thousand, based on eight murders. Thing haven’t changed much since. In fact, except for 1993, when for some reason there were 21 murders in the state, the number of homicides fluctuates between the high single digits and the mid-teens, allowing Vermont to uphold its reputation as a safe, healthy, state where, compared with most other states, people do not kill.
A reputation not entirely deserved. Vermonters rarely kill someone else. But they are quite a bit more likely than other Americans to kill themselves.
That same year of 2006 (chosen because it is the most recent year for which reliable suicide statistics are available), when only a handful of Vermonters killed another person, 80 committed suicide, a rate of 13.1 per hundred-thousand, according to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center. Here, Vermont’s statistics are worse than the nation as whole, where 11.1 people per hundred-thousand population killed themselves that year.
For whatever reason, suicide seems to be a worse problem in Vermont than in the neighboring states. New Hampshire’s 12.2 per hundred-thousand is slightly lower, and still above the national average. But in Massachusetts (7.2 per hundred-thousand) and New York (6.7), the rate is far lower than in most of the rest of the country,
From 1995 through 2006, the SPRC reported, Vermont had a 13.7 per hundred-thousand suicide rate, with an average of 1.5 suicides a week, making suicide the ninth leading cause of death in the state. It is eleventh nationally.
“Things have not changed that much,” since those statistics were compiled, said Elana Premack Sandler, a Prevention Specialist at SPRC’s Boston office. Vermont remains one of the states where a person is more likely to kill him or her self.
Probably himself. As in most other states, the vast majority of Vermont suicides – 82 percent — are men, meaning that 23 of every hundred-thousand Vermont men take their own lives, making suicide the seventh leading cause of death of Vermont men. The rate for women was 4.8 per hundred-thousand.
As might be expected, older people were most likely to take their own lives. In Vermont, the rate for those over 70 was 19.6 per hundred-thousand (43 for males over 70). But suicide experts in Vermont and elsewhere are increasingly worried about teenage suicides. The SPRC reported four youth suicides in Vermont in 2006, a slightly higher rate than the nation’s as a whole.
As might not be expected, there does not seem to be a correlation between suicide and either income or education. Nationally (this hardly applies in Vermont), non-Hispanic whites are more likely to take their own lives than are blacks or Hispanics.
“Income and socio-economic class does not really enter into it,” said Brian Remer, project manager for youth suicide prevention at the Center for Health and Learning in Brattleboro.http://www.healthandlearning.org/
“There’s a myth out there that people who are poor and down on their luck might be more inclined to take their own lives. It’s more a combination of a lot of different factors.”
The most important of these, he said, is probably “social isolation,” which helps explain why, in Vermont and around the country, suicide is more common in rural areas. Nationally, New Mexico (19.8 suicides per hundred thousand population from 1995 through 2005), Alaska (21), and Montana (20) are the states with the highest rates, Elana Premack Sandler said.
In some of these states, the rate might be affected by the one exception to the general rule that non-Hispanic whites are more likely to take their own lives than are members of a minority group. Not if the minority group is American Indians or Alaska natives. In Alaska, the suicide rate for these two groups is a frightening 45.9 per hundred-thousand.
In these cases, poverty and other pathologies such as alcoholism might contribute to the suicide rate. But Premack Sandler said most experts still regard isolation as the biggest problem.
The same holds in Vermont, said Remer. The suicide rate in rural Essex County in the Northeast Kingdom is higher than Alaska’s – 24 per hundred-thousand. Essex County residents are poorer and less educated than most Vermonters, but Remer said, “suicide rates are probably higher in rural areas because of isolation and the difficulty receiving or getting to mental health services” than to income or education levels. Mental health, he said, “plays a part in about 90 percent of the suicides.”
And while there are no statistics about rural attitudes as such, suicide experts are convinced that the stigma attached to mental illness, which seems stronger in rural areas, prevents some people from dealing with the problems that can lead to suicide.
“The stigma is a big thing,” Remer said. “If a son or daughter exhibits unusual behavior, parents often think, ‘maybe they inherited this condition from me,’ or ‘I’m a bad parent, or people will think I’m a bad parent.’ We know this is not true. Mental illness often has a chemical or genetic base, and people can get real help from therapy and medication.”
Bill Lippert, the Democratic State Representative from Hinesburg who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, noted that though there were “twice as many suicides as murders in Vermont” (actually, more than twice as many), every murder garners a massive headline, but the issue of suicide is generally not receiving the same level of public awareness because there’s still the stigma attached to mental illness.”
But mental illness is only one aspect of the suicide discussion that many experts and activists are reluctant to discuss. The other is the method, though the data are clear. People can take their lives using all kinds of devices including poisons, knives, and suffocation. But in Vermont and nationwide, more than half of all suicides shoot themselves.
That’s what Aaron Xue did last year. He was 15. He apparently was given a gun (or perhaps guns) by another youth, who took them from his home in Essex, where Aaron also lived. Aaron’s mother thinks it should be simple to pass a law that would make it less likely that teenagers could take loaded guns from home. She may be wrong.
Tags: suicide
