Calls to suicide hotline up

Tuesday, May 4, 1999 | 11:17 a.m.

When two teenagers killed 13 people and themselves at a Colorado high school two weeks ago, Dorothy Bryant saw an increase in the number of calls to the Las Vegas suicide hotline.

"We have seen some additional calls -- not a lot, but more serious ones," said Bryant, executive director of the Suicide Prevention Center.

Bryant rates the seriousness of calls on a scale of one to 10. The first three ratings include people who just want to talk or get information.

"Over three, there has been some ideation, some thought about suicide," Bryant said. "Recently, especially since last week, our calls have been in the six-to-10 range."

Nevada has consistently ranked first among the states in suicides for years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From 1990 to 1994, the state recorded 22.5 suicides per 100,000 people compared with a national average of 12 per 100,000, the agency said.

The trend is continuing upward, according to the Clark County Coroner's office. In 1998 there were 286 suicides here compared with 202 in 1990, according to figures released last week.

The coroner's numbers refute the conventional wisdom that Las Vegas has so many suicides because of the visitor volume. Only 33 of the suicides were by nonresidents.

In addition, the numbers showed, 60 of the 286 were men ages 40 to 49 -- the largest category. Only eight women in that age group took their own lives.

Most of the suicides -- 171 -- were by gun, 43 overdosed on drugs, 32 were by hanging and 16 by carbon monoxide.

Bryant says social trends may be driving more people to suicide.

The mass murders in Littleton, Colo., she said, has deeply saddened people and made many wonder what's going on with the country and whether it is worth living anymore.

People are feeling cut adrift, she said.

Companies are no longer loyal to their employees, firing them with little remorse, sometimes after years of service.

"We live in a new society where loyalty factors don't seem to be important now at our workplace," Bryant said.

The suicide rate in Clark County has not improved in the six years since Linda Flatt's 25-year-old son took his own life.

"It happens in Nevada at twice the national rate," said Flatt, who has become an activist in suicide prevention since her son killed himself over gambling debts. "The reasons for this are complex.

"This is a very transient town. People have access to addictive processes. People come here with high expectations and not much of a support network. When their expectations are not met they don't have family or support."

Two years ago Flatt became a community organizer for a national group called the Suicide Prevention Advocacy Network, established in 1996 by a Georgia couple whose daughter committed suicide.

"They got involved in the prevention area and became very frustrated with what they found," Flatt said. "They found nonexistent programs or programs that overlapped. They were frustrated with what they saw and felt something else could be done."

Flatt said she has seen the beginning of change.

Congress has passed resolutions acknowledging there is a serious public health problem with suicide. "They call for improved methods of suicide prevention and better access to mental health care," Flatt said.

In 1997 Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., whose father committed suicide more than 25 years ago, co-sponsored Senate Resolution 84.

Though the resolutions didn't provide funding, Flatt said Reid was able to use them to get $500,000 from the Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations Bill to create a Suicide Prevention Research Center at the University of Nevada School of Medicine in Las Vegas

The center, operating on a three-year contract, was established in September.

At a Suicide Prevention Conference in Reno last October, 430 specialists on the issue adopted a suicide prevention strategy.

In about 10 days Flatt and Terri Greenfield, another community organizer for the suicide prevention network, will visit Nevada's senators and representatives in Washington to lobby for that strategy.

The strategy targets three areas, she said, including suicide prevention through research and public education; intervention through counseling, medication and hotlines; and "post-vention," which is care for the bereaved survivors of those who committed suicide.

"The national strategy is in place," Flatt said. "We are making sure that it does not sit on a shelf. We are asking Congress to fund a national strategy team."

She said her organization wants Congress to fund pilot projects in a few states that will implement the strategy.

"I want Nevada to be one of those states," she said. "I'm going to ask our lawmakers get involved and make sure Nevada is in line for money."

Bryant says the Suicide Prevention Center, which has helped more than 200,000 people over the past 30 years, is expanding some of its services.

"Everyone knows about the hotline," she said. "But we want to reach people before then. We're doing some reorganizing. We want to strongly get into the prevention area, into community education. We want to try to assist whoever needs help.

"We want more community outreach."

One of the organization's new programs involves youth.

"We are starting a Yellow Ribbon Youth Program," she said. "We've never before had a youth program, and we're hoping this new group will help us in reaching more young people.

"We're hoping through them we can learn more about their peers and what is going on in disseminating information at their level. We're really excited about this."

The program will entail a select group of teenagers helping at the office and speaking to organizations and maybe helping with fund-raising. The center is in the midst of a $200,000 fund-raising drive.

"What we want to do is ask them how they can help us reach the young people," she said.