CDC: Suicide rates rising steadily nationwide and in Connecticut

State’s numbers relatively low, but the middle-aged are at particular risk

Extensive suicide prevention efforts have kept rates of suicide deaths relatively low in Connecticut, but the numbers have still increased steadily since 1999, particularly among middle-aged people, state and federal statistics show.

The national increases measured in a new report by the Centers for Disease Control varied between states, and Connecticut's increase was on the low end: It ranks 46th in rates of suicide deaths and 43rd in the rate of increased deaths since 1999.

Suicide prevention efforts in Connecticut have increased in those years with the creation in 2012 of the

Connecticut Suicide Advisory Board, which merged suicide prevention efforts by the Department of Children and Families, the Department of Public Health and Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.

That, combined with state legislative support, federal grants through the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and relatively strict laws on gun ownership, have put Connecticut in

a relatively strong position to keep suicide deaths down, said Andrea Duarte of the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services’ prevention division.

A study of laws allowing authorities to seize firearms from people thought to be mentally unstable in Indiana and Connecticut found that gun-related suicides were 7.5 percent lower in Indiana after 10 years and 13.7 percent lower in Connecticut, a year after enforcement began.

But, Duarte said, they haven’t stopped the numbers of suicide deaths from going up, alongside rates of partipation in risky behaviors such as drug use.

“Our total deaths have been creeping up for quite some time,” she said.

Death rates from suicide jumped in 2008 with the financial devastation many experienced during the economic recession, and have increased to more than one death per day in Connecticut.

According to the CDC report, suicide rates rose in every state except Nevada from 1999 to 2016, increasing 25 percent nationally.

A total of 402 people died by suicide in Connecticut in 2017 — 304 men and 98 women, according to data reported by the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. And while those numbers are low compared to the per capita numbers in other states with looser gun laws and more spread-out emergency medical care, they don’t measure the effect a suicide can have on the person’s family and community, Duarte said.

“The most important thing to know is that each person was very much loved and cared about by someone else,” she said. “One death is too many.”

While Connecticut has an extensive list of state agencies, nonprofit organizations and two available mental health crisis hotlines aimed at preventing suicide, the state’s financial troubles have forced some of those efforts to consolidate.

Connecticut has limited state funding for suicide prevention, said Ann Irr Dagle, who founded the Brian T. Dagle Memorial Foundation in 2014 with her husband after their son, an East Lyme High School graduate, died by suicide at age 19.

Much of the support comes from the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services and federal funding such as the Garrett Lee Smith Campus Suicide Prevention grant program.

Money from that program is now being used to fund a Connecticut United Way effort to form support groups for young adults affected by suicide, according to Kate Mattias, the executive director of the Connecticut chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

The funding from federal sources helps, though much of it is aimed at teenagers and adolescents. Funds for suicide prevention specifically in older adults — who have been dying by suicide at increasing rates since the 1990s — are rare.

In Connecticut, 100 adults between ages 50 and 59 died by suicide last year, nearly twice the reported number in 2007.

“That is ... relatively new information that those rates are rising,” Mattias said. “That sort of gives one pause that we need to focus on that age range.”

Most of the suicide victims in that age range were men.

Higher rates of substance abuse and drug addiction are also associated with higher suicide rates, Duarte said. Along with mental health training for police and correctional officers, the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services has pushed for education about removing prescription drugs from people’s homes and reducing access to lethal weapons.

Dagle said she believes many victims of suicide are prevented by social pressure from seeking help.

“A lot of the gaps are still there because of the stigma associated with suicide and mental health,” she said.