Youth suicide rate declined slightly in 2021 throughout NM

Local organization hopes to continue trajectory

The suicide rate among kids between 5 and 18-years-old saw “small decline” in 2021, according to provisional data from the New Mexico Department of Health’s Epidemiology and Response Division. The final data is expected this coming fall.

“It is a beginning in a what is expected to be a long-term collaborative effort with the New Mexico Human Services Department and community partners to address a nationwide problem of suicide death rates, which exceed national averages,” read a press release from NMDOH.

September was recently proclaimed as Suicide Prevention Month by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

“Suicide prevention works,” said Department of Human Services Secretary and Acting Department of Health Secretary David Scrase. “It requires concerted effort of people properly equipped with training and resources. We need to maintain focus on our ongoing efforts to fix New Mexico’s broken mental healthcare system.”

Stephanie Waters, advisory chairperson of Help Outreach Taos, said her organization works to bring together the many nonprofits in Northern New Mexico focused on youth mental health, with the hope of fostering a streamlined approach to preventing youth suicide.

“About five years ago, it was really on the uprise — like really on the uprise — which is why we kind of reconvened and started Help Outreach Taos,” Waters said.

In 2016, a total of 16 people in Taos County died by suicide, including two teenagers, one of whom jumped off the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. Since that time, Waters has seen a “massive surge” of community outreach around the topic. This includes bringing awareness to the issue and destigmatizing mental health issues, which Water credits as a potential “contributing factor in [the lower numbers in] our little community.”

Waters said it was important to generate conversation around youth suicide. “Just generating conversation around suicide awareness definitely affects prevention. Because when people come to you to talk about suicide, there’s usually this stigma attached. They don’t know how to talk to you about it,” she explained.

Talking about it openly involves connecting with community partners like schools, teachers, educators and local government organizations. Her organization offers free “Question, Protocol and Response” and “Mental Health First Aid” training to the community. Waters said they have not connected with any law enforcement agencies yet, “but we’d like to.”

Waters said Taos County still lacks enough mental health providers to get at the root of suicidal behavior. “The overwhelming lack of resources is a really big problem in this town,” she said. “There are very few resources to send people for counseling.”

This is where she hopes to play a role. “We just about finished our resource guide for the community, and it’s a very extensive resource guide,” she explained. The guide contains information about how to get help locally and nationally, as well as ways to address youth dealing with mental health crises.

Taos County EMS Director Chris Medina said he deals with teen and adult suicidal behavior frequently, but said he only sees a handful of youth suicides every year. He agreed there is a dearth of community services to help address the problem.

“There really aren’t a whole lot of mental health resources left in Taos County where people can go and just, you know, visit with counselors and you know, kind of get that outpatient one-on-one care that they need,” Medina said.

This means those people who would normally rely on a primary care provider or therapist end up calling emergency services. “When the situation gets to a point where they can’t handle it anymore, they access the 911 system, and then we end up transporting them to the hospital and then the hospital does their thing.”

“If we had some more outpatient [services] and more things like that in the county, then I think that would help, and not overwhelm the system with mental health issues,” he added.

Medina said when Tri-County Community Services served the area, the calls for mental healthrelated issues were lower. “That definitely makes a difference. When those services went away, our call volumes started to rise,” he said.

He said the implementation of the 988 suicide and crisis hotline can help. However, Waters said the hotline is still getting off the ground. “Someone called 988 last week just as a trial, and they were put on hold,” she said.

Regardless, Waters said the groundwork is being laid to foster a community ready to handle youth mental health issues, in part through Help Outreach Taos. “We’ve been able to get things started, which is difficult here — to actually find people that will run with an idea and bring it to fruition,” she said. “Our rate of completing projects and supporting the community have been pretty good, really.”

She said they plan to show the most recent film by documentarian Ken Burns: “Hiding in Plain Sight: Youth Mental Illness,” at the Taos Center for the Arts on Sept. 24 at 7 p.m. The event is free to the public.

‘When the situation gets to a point where they can’t handle it anymore, they access the 911 system, and then we end up transporting them to the hospital and then the hospital does their thing. If we had some more outpatient [services] and more things like that in the county, then I think that would help, and not overwhelm the system with mental health issues.’

CHRIS MEDINA

Taos County EMS Director