Summary:

For years, the suicide rate in El Paso County has been higher than in most other counties in America, causing the issue to be spotlighted in the 2011 Quality of Life Indicators report.

During the past six years, the county has averaged 18 suicides per 100,000 residents, said Dale Terry, a Quality of Life report researcher and director of research at AspenPointe, a Colorado Springs mental health care provider. By comparison, during the same period, 16 of 100,000 Coloradoans, and nationally 11 of 100,000 Americans, committed suicide.

The highest suicide rates in El Paso County are among teenagers and people over age 65.

From 2006 to 2009, 15.2 out of 100,000 teenagers age 15 to 18 ended their lives, the report states. That’s four more suicides than the average rate among Colorado teens, and nine more than the national average per 100,000 citizens.

In El Paso County, from 2006 to 2009, 20.3 of 100,000 residents older than 64 killed themselves, the report states. That’s six more than the national average in 2007.Among El Paso County seniors, more than half of suicides are veterans.Why it’s persistent:

In 2004, El Paso County had 26 suicides per 100,000 residents, the second highest rate in America that year. Five years later, things were not much better, with 22 county residents out of every 100,000 committing suicide.

As to why the El Paso County suicide rate has remained high for years, the report offers no simple explanation. It appears, however, that post traumatic stress disorder among veterans is a factor.

Veterans make up 18 percent of the Colorado Springs population. Veterans account for nearly one-third of all El Paso County suicides, the report states.

Contributing causes to El Paso County suicides include undiagnosed mental illness, drug abuse, family problems, alcoholism, economic worries and joblessness, the report said.The report examines the region’s shortage of health care professionals and the drastic public funding cuts for behavioral health treatment. It concludes that the dearth of behavioral care in the county may be contributing to the high suicide rate.

From 2008 to 2010, 29,000 public health jobs disappeared in the county due to layoff and attrition, the report states. When compared to other Colorado counties, El Paso lags far in the physician-to-population ratio. Boulder County, for example, has one primary care provider for every 550 residents, while El Paso has one for every 1,350 residents.

Since 2001, public health funding in El Paso County has been cut 41 percent, or by nearly $2.1 million, the report states. For fiscal 2011, Colorado allocated only $300,000 to suicide prevention programs, said Jarrod Hindman, director of the Office of Suicide Prevention for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment in Denver.

Janet Karnes, executive director of Suicide Prevention Partnership in the Pikes Peak Region, said her organization receives no state or federal funding. That’s typical, she says, of El Paso County behavioral health organizations. Most behavioral providers are financed by private donations and fundraising events.

One of the few El Paso County organizations receiving suicide prevention state funds is AspenPointe, which offers free behavioral evaluation to the uninsured and indigent. But because the funding is small, the healthcare nonprofit can offer services only on a first-come, first-served basis, said AspenPointe president and CEO Morris L. Roth.

Solutions:

A comprehensive approach to suicide prevention is needed to lower suicide rates in El Paso County, the report says. Cynthia Doty, lead researcher and author of the report’s suicide findings, said biological, physical, social, environmental and cultural factors of people at risk need to be addressed for the county to improve suicide prevention.“We need to understand the whole picture for high-risk groups,” Doty said.

A new program seeking to help at-risk teenagers is Project Safety Net, developed by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Project Safety Net will gather data on the complex triggers of depression, and teach adults how to spot suicidal teenagers. The federally-funded, three-year program is being launched in seven Colorado regions and counties, including El Paso.

Inroads are also being made to reach out to at-risk veterans through group programs, experts interviewed said.

To attract primary care doctors to the region, county health care providers are working with Colorado medical groups to bring more medical residencies to the region, since studies show that doctors tend to remain in the area in which they complete their residency.

Meanwhile, a push by local mental health leaders is underway to form stronger alliances among the county’s medical and behavioral clinics.

Carol Bruce-Fritz is executive director of the Community Health Partnership, a coalition of health providers that includes Memorial Health System and the El Paso County Department of Health and Environment. She said that budget cuts and physician shortages are not excuses.

Through strategic alliances, health organizations can learn to spot mentally troubled patients and refer them to the right behavioral providers and programs.

“If we work closely together, we can work around” budget cuts and physician shortages, Bruce-Fritz said. “We have to come together as a community and help one another to increase the county’s mental health overall.”Colorado Springs Mayor Steve Bach said the region’s suicide rate is “Another great concern.”“The community is going to have to come forward and do more – our mental health professionals, the private sector, all kinds of organizations,” Bach said Friday.

Among the things Bach learned at a meeting of Colorado’s mayors in Denver this week is the need to look within communities for solutions, he said. Representatives from the University of Denver’s Daniels School of Business stressed that “federal and state dollars are not going to be there,” Bach said.

“That’s telling. That says we’re not going to be able to continue to depend on Big Brother, and that we as a community are going to have to find ways to help each other more than we have and to help people in need, certainly in this area of suicide.

“I hope there will be people who will rise up based on this data in the sense of volunteering to take the lead” in finding solutions, Bach added.

Northbound traffic on Interstate 25 was backed up to Interquest Parkway in July 2010, following a suicide from the Baptist Road overpass. Photo by The Gazette file