Brazier seeking to start conversation about suicide prevention
Coroner wants to prevent future tragedies by frank talk about mental health challenges with youth
Polk County Coroner Tony Brazier usually comes into the lives of people in the most extreme of circumstances, when life has come to an end. His job in essence is to decide how someone has died, and whether that death comes from natural or unnatural causes.
Much of caseload that Brazier takes on annually - on average around 200plus deaths per year - are the results of individual lives lost through accidents or have some unexplained circumstances around them, usually in cases where a death can't be immediately explained because they were unattended, such as someone dying in their sleep.
But a small and growing percentage of cases Brazier have been called to provide his services on have much broader consequences for loved ones and the community as a whole, and are tragic ends for people the coroner believes could have been helped.
Brazier is specifically concerned by the growing number of suicides in Polk County, citing an annual average of between 15- 20 suicides per year - or around 10 percent of the total coroner's office caseload - has already been reached for the year with 22 reported suicides since Dec. 31, 2016 out of 150 cases the coroner's offices has been called to open.
Though the number isn't counted in annual statistics, he said the high profile suicide of 12-year-old Katelyn Davis during the winter holidays in December 2016 remains fresh in his mind along with many others in the community, and with additional cases to begin the year wanting to speak out about the issue has stuck.
A case involving Davis' death - officially ruled as a suicide by Brazier - is still open with the Polk County Police Department. She broadcasted her death via a livestreaming website on her cell phone in front of her home in December 2016.
One thing Brazier understands is that no matter the age of a person who decides to take their own life, there's usually some form of mental or emotional issue to bring on suicidal intentions, and eventually being able to carry it through to a sad conclusion.
"There's got to be a common catalyst in all suicides, and that common catalyst is generally the psychiatric norm of chronic depression," Brazier said.
And that's something that can be treated via therapy and careful use of prescription medications which can help prevent many of the suicide cases he's seen so far this year.
Brazier is the first to admit it isn't that simple, of course. Every suicide case he's come across has individual elements at play with each individual who chose to take their own life.
"Every suicide case is different," he said. "They have inherit differences in the what they were struggling with, in the socioeconomic factors they had to deal with, and a whole lot of issues."
By no means are these deaths easy for his office to handle either. He said that the means of death are about split evenly between violent means, such as using a handgun, rifle or shotgun or sharp objects, hanging or self-strangulation and overdoses evenly.
All three of those causes of death bring with them several forensic challenges, Brazier said, depending on the severity. It's not scenes that he and his staff are much willing to discuss in a profession already filled with tragic circumstances.
Add to that the fact that Brazier is seeing an increased number of suicides of youth 25 and younger, which has been going up nationally for several years.
According to statistics gathered by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the rate has been steadily increasing nationally overall for deaths per year per 100,000 people. So for every 100,000 people in the American population of 300-million plus since the last census, 13 people have committed suicide in 2015. That's compared to a figure of around 11 people for every 100,000 recorded in 2006.
Nationally, each year around 44,000 people in America die by suicide. About 12.5 percent of those are youth under the age of 20, and some 15.5 percent of those in 2015 were between 20 and 34.
By those figures, around 5,500 of those Americans who died by suicide two years ago were under the age of 20, and around 6,800 of those who died were between the age of 20-34.
Georgians accounted for more than 1,300 of those deaths in past years, or 12.66 people per 100,000 within the state and is ranked 38th in the country in suicide deaths.
But it's second leading cause of death for people 25-34 in the state, and the third leading cause of death for youth 10-24.
"That's the crazy thing about this whole mess with suicide now, more and more times the victims are becoming younger. That's really, really troubling me," Brazier said.
Those are figures Brazier believes can be tackled through responsible choices made in the community.
And it's the job of people like Noelle Beard to see what they can do to get more people involved in suicide prevention. Beard, a licensed professional counselor with Highland Rivers Health said that the organization is in the process of expanding the use of the Garrett Lee Smith grant to all 12 counties they serve.
Originally awarded due to an over-average number of deaths in Bartow County by suicide, Beard said the money goes to help train what are called "QPR" counselor in communities, that act as a first line of offense for helping people with suicidal intentions.
"It only takes an hour of training and geared to anyone in the community," Beard said. "Really anyone can take part in it."
She said the other part of fighting suicide and the stigma that has been attached to it comes in the form of thinking about it as a sickness of it's own instead of a symptom of something larger.
"Someone who is suicidal might have depression, but also suicidal. We do know that a lot of people who commit suicide have depression or a disorder of some kind," she said. "We're trying to understand that relationship, but also treat the intent by itself via suicide specific care."
Much of the way that people are treated for suicidal intentions has also changed in Beard's view. Simply locking someone up for observation isn't considered in the long view to help with a positive outcome. Instead, now brief observation is done at the hospital with the idea of letting a patient be comfortable at home, and using outpatient services to have one-on-one interactions with therapists.
"What we've done in the past doesn't work as well as we thought," Beard said. "The idea that there can be sui--
cide specific care on an outpatient basis to help people deal with their problems is much better for the patient and the counselor helping them."
Meanwhile, it's Brazier's hopes that by beginning a conversation about the problem of younger people in the community choosing to take their own lives and following through with their intentions, a stigma can be lifted off the actions alone.
He points out that many times, those contemplating taking their own lives can be helped long before they reach the point where thoughts become actions by more diligent attention paid in the community to various warning signs.
Those include excessive sadness or moodiness, hopelessness, sleep problems, withdrawal from daily life, changes in personality and appearance, dangerous or selfharmful behaviors and more.
He said that if people are more willing to recognize the signs, and take appropriate actions by notifying those who can help like guidance counselors within the school system or professionals in the medical community with concerns, many lives can be saved.
Brazier added too that if issues surrounding mental health and suicide weren't as stigmatized in the community as a whole across the nation, more people would seek help and numbers of selfcaused deaths would decrease.
"That's what makes it so devastating to a community and why we should really pay attention to anyone with mental health issues," Brazier said. "Chronic depression or otherwise can affect anyone at any age, and quite often there's help out there that can turn things around and counseling or pharmacological treatment can help."