Arkansas is moving up in the national ratings--but not in a way to be envied. On the contrary, it's a move to beware. For this state now ranks 10th in the nation when it comes to the number of suicides per capita, while it used to be a disturbing enough 16th. In 2015, a total of 557 people in this suicidal state killed themselves. Ours is the only state in the Union without a suicide hotline--except for Wyoming, where the suicide rate is also impressive. That is, it leaves an impression. And not a good one.
It doesn't take a mathematician to make the connection: The fewer suicide hotlines, the more suicides. Old-timers will remember that when the figures on income per capita came out in years past and showed Arkansas ranking second from the cellar, which was occupied almost permanently by Mississippi, many of us used to say Thank God for Mississippi. What are we supposed to say now, Thank God for Wyoming?
Here's another connection the people of Arkansas need to make: Help for the suicidal needs to be ready at hand and close to home, not routed through a neighboring state like Tennessee that does have hotlines. To quote a state representative from Jacksonville, the Hon. Bob Johnson: "If I'm calling some place in Memphis, they don't have a clue about what I need or where I can go for help in Batesville, Arkansas." Which is one reason HB 1775 would have the state's health department "establish and maintain to the extent that funding is available" a suicide-prevention hotline. What's this about paying for a suicide hotline only if the money to run it is available? How and why put a price on a human life? Some of us think each such life is priceless.
A suicide hotline in this state would be open 24/7 and is expected to handle the 1,000 calls that the national call center gets from Arkansas every month. No, not every suicide can be prevented, but Tyler West--he's with the Arkansas chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention--says getting the suicidal to think things through in the first 20 minutes of their desperation increases the chances of saving them by 80 percent. Call centers, he adds, "are the first line of defense against a really complex problem." But that doesn't mean each step of the solution can't be simple. Like asking the suicidal to think of the effect their loss would have on their mothers and fathers and children, their families and friends. And on all of us who will miss them.
"No man is an island, entire of itself," poet John Donne wrote, "Each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. And therefore send not to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
To go from heart-rending poetry to unemotional actuarial tables, suicide turned out to be the biggest injury-related reason for death in this state in 2015. Suicides were almost double the number of homicides, which is troubling enough. What's more, suicides seem be most prevalent among the youngest members of the community. For them it seems to be an act of impulse, not a result of premeditation. Sadly, too, our veterans--those who have defended us all--tend to kill themselves in larger numbers than their population would guess. How hollow that statistic makes the formal phrase about Thank You For Your Service ring in our ears, and should. No wonder veterans' organizations are supporting HB 1775--groups like the Arkansas Veterans Coalition, Central Arkansas Veterans Mental Health Council, and Veterans Impact, a list that comprises an honor roll of service to their country.
"I've been to more funerals of veterans who died by suicide than I can count," says Tanya Phillips, who handles several titles and outfits dealing with veterans, and who clearly knows what she's talking about when it comes to suicidal thoughts--firsthand. After her tour in Iraq, she came back with a souvenir: an aching back that wouldn't give her any relief. To top it off, she lost her job while serving overseas and her husband left her. "Suicide is not always about wanting to die," she explains. "Sometimes it's an ambivalence about living or dying." And the suicidal may wind up not caring about which way the balance is tipped. With her, what made her choose life may have been the thought of her three kids: What would happen to them if she were gone?
But for those who'd like to think of suicide in terms of dollars and cents, there's all that federal money available for suicide prevention, and may not be if the state neglects to take advantage of a $1.2-million grant if Arkansas doesn't establish its own suicide call center. Time's a-wastin', and time is money.
To go from the sublime to the ridiculous in this whole range of arguments for life, here's a reminder courtesy of the late great Dorothy Parker and her poem Resume: You might as well live.
Editorial on 03/08/2017