Suicide kills more than 30,000 people in this country every year. That’s roughly the same number killed in traffic accidents and comes close to the annual toll for breast cancer.
We don’t hear about it much. We don’t see many T-shirts or charity walks or TV ads spreading the word about how to
save those precious lives.
“It’s not something I would have ever wanted to talk to my kids about,” Leah Simpson said.
After the tragedy of suicide took her son’s life in 1992, the Edmonds woman was compelled to talk about it. With her husband, Scot Simpson, she became an outspoken adv
ocate for suicide prevention programs in schools.
The Simpsons were early leaders of the Washington State Youth Suicide Prevention Committee, which grew into the Youth Suicide Prevention Program. Today, the nonprofit program offers health curriculum to the state’s middle schools and high schools. The aim is to prevent suicide by giving students information about ways to help other kids.
“Kids listen to their peers,” Simpson said Friday. She said the programs give students ways to reach out when they’re worried about a friend.
Two disturbing local stories last week forced us to look at the sad subject. A couple found dead Tuesday at a campsite east of Granite Fall were victims of suicide, investigators said. The husband and wife died of gunshot wounds in a double suicide, the Snohomish County Medical Examiner’s Office said.
On Thursday, Herald readers learned heartbreaking details about a 14-year-old boy, a Yakama tribal member, who in January jumped to his death from an I-5 overpass in Lynnwood. The boy had been in 22 foster homes, according to an executive fatality review of his death. The review was released by the Children’s Administration, a division of the state Department of Social and Health Services.
Those stories had nothing in common but despair — to a degree that life is unbearable.
Suicide touches people young and old, those suffering from terminal illnesses and people who appear to have everything in life.
In Snohomish County in 2008, according to the Snohomish Health District, suicide was the second leading cause of death among people ages 18 to 24, claiming nine lives in that age group. It was the third leading cause of death for people ages 25 to 44 that year, killing 22 young adults. Twenty-six people ages 45 to 64 died by suicide in 2008 in the county.
Nationally, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide claimed 34,598 lives in 2007. In 2008, car accidents killed 34,172 people, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Commission.
Washington’s Death With Dignity Act, in effect since 2009, allows terminally ill adults to request lethal doses of medication. The state’s annual report for 2010 showed that 87 people received the lethal doses, and that 51 died after actually taking it.
In a 2010 Healthy Youth Survey released this spring by the Snohomish Health District, which questioned 13,000 students from 14 area school districts, 13.8 percent of eighth graders, 19.7 percent of 10th graders, and 15.6 percent of 12th graders said they seriously considered suicide in the past year.
Leah Simpson travels around the state each year to present schools with the Trevor Simpson Lifesaver Award. Given to schools that get kids involved in the Youth Suicide Prevention Program, the award is named in honor of the boy she lost.
Trevor Simpson, 16, was an Edmonds-Woodway High School sophomore, a handsome football player and honor student.
Interviewed by The Herald in 1998, Leah Simpson said her son would come home from school and throw awards on the counter. “No matter what he did, he just didn’t feel good enough,” she said. Like any mother would, she said she told her son not to put himself down.
Now, she understands there were subtle signs he was considering suicide. She and her husband have worked almost 20 years to help others understand.
The Youth Suicide Prevention Program, which put Washington on the leading edge in tackling the issue, includes on its board Molly Adrian of the University of Washington Child Health Institute and state Rep. Marko Liias, an Edmonds Democrat.
Suicide is still talked about in hushed tones.
“There’s still some resistance,” Scot Simpson said about awareness programs in schools. “It has to have faculty buy-in. It’s usually a counselor,” Leah Simpson said.
“I know the stigma is still out there. It’s easing up a little bit,” she said. “It’s not a comfortable subject.”
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
Crisis hotline
In Snohomish and Island counties, the 24-hour Volunteers of America Care Crisis Line, staffed by professional counselors, is available at: 425-258-4357 or 800-584-3578.
The Youth Suicide Prevention Program works with schools in Washington to offer presentations and counseling, and provides suicide prevention information: www.yspp.org.
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