Proposed initiative aims to reduce suicides in Stanislaus County

After seeing a 27 percent spike in suicides over a five-year period, Stanislaus County leaders will consider a proposal to get different sectors of the community involved with reducing the suicide rate.

The Board of Supervisors could approve the three-year prevention initiative at its meeting Tuesday evening. A state oversight and accountability commission will decide whether it qualifies as an innovation project under the Mental Health Services Act of 2004.

The county’s suicide rate of 11 per 100,000 population is higher than the statewide rate of 10.2 per 100,000.

According to a report for Tuesday’s meeting, the county lost 231 people to suicide from 2010 through 2014. Only one-fourth of those individuals had been treated by private practitioners or county mental health providers, the report said.

Of the 52 suicides in 2014, fewer than 20 percent of those individuals had previous contract with the fragmented mental health system. There were 48 suicides in the county in 2013, 45 in 2012, 45 in 2011 and 41 in 2010.

County Behavioral Health and Recovery Services wants to coordinate the efforts of different groups that already work on suicide prevention, including government agencies, community-based organizations, nonprofit foundations and schools.

Madelyn Schlaepfer, director of BHRS, said those groups could work together to review the available data and possibly target age groups in which suicide is more prevalent.

Local experts don’t have an explanation for the increase. “There is an overlap with the recession,” Schlaepfer said. “In some cases, there were people losing their homes, families breaking up and individuals losing hope.”

Historically, a higher percentage of suicides occurred locally in young adults in the 20 to 29 age group, the director said. But the most recent data are not broken down by age or ethnicity.

Groups that work with young people might provide insights into whether bullying on social media is a factor in depression and suicide, Schlaepfer noted.

The initiative also could look at the causes for suicide among older adults. Are isolation, economic desperation or serious health problems some of the factors for that age group?

A higher suicide risk among veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is recognized nationally. But officials don’t know if that is reflected in the county trend.

For the prevention initiative, the county proposes to use the same model as the widely discussed Focus on Prevention, which is getting multiple sectors involved with tackling quality of life issues in Stanislaus County.

The mental health initiative could include health care providers, veterans, the faith community, schools, neighborhoods and families touched by suicide.

The county would spend about $628,000 on the prevention effort over three years. Those costs include salary and benefits for a part-time project manager, analyst and administrative clerk, as well as expenditures for marketing and supplies.

County Behavioral Health and Recovery Services has done suicide prevention outreach with a hotline, billboards alerting people to the warning signs and training for the public.

“Those efforts have not produced the kind of outcomes we have wanted,” Schlaepfer said.

This story was originally published March 14, 2016 at 5:13 PM with the headline "Proposed initiative aims to reduce suicides in Stanislaus County."