Aug. 23--In 2008 in Tennessee, at least 965 people killed themselves.
Each of those 965 deaths directly affected between six and 28 people, said Cynthia Lynn, assistant professor of nursing at Carson-Newman College's School of Nursing and Behavioral Health.
Those survivors are left to puzzle over a mystery they in all likelihood will never solve -- and far too many are left to do it all alone, Lynn said.
As she worked toward her doctoral degree in nursing from East Tennessee State University, Lynn became overwhelmingly aware of the stigma associated with suicide, a tragedy in which "the murderer and the victim are the same" person, she said, and the extent to which that stigma leaves intimates of the deceased isolated in their grief.
That's led her to begin a support group for these survivors of suicide, to help with "navigating the ocean of grief after the suicide death of a loved one," she said. It meets 6-7:30 p.m. the first Thursday of each month at Jefferson Memorial Hospital in Jefferson City. (For information, call 865-471-3256 or send email to clynn@cn.edu.)
Here, she said, those who have lost family members, friends or co-workers to suicide can come together in a supportive, nonjudgmental environment to share experiences and help each other heal.
She also wants to create a resource so people will know how to support those grieving a suicide.
For her dissertation, Lynn interviewed mothers whose children had completed suicide. Every woman she interviewed reported a lack of the kind of support that would have helped them in their grief, with people they knew -- in some cases, even health providers and clergy -- saying cruel or inappropriate things, or avoiding them altogether.
Too, society harshly judges those who take their own lives, she said.
"I would not argue that suicide is a selfish act," Lynn said. But "when someone is hurting that much, it's not necessarily that they want to die; they just want to end the pain. If your arm was cut off, your first order of business would be to stop the bleeding and no one would fault you for that."
Lynn already is trying to shape attitudes in nursing and mental health classes she teaches. But it needs to be broader, she said -- and, unfortunately, it appears the need isn't going to go away.
Tennessee's 2008 suicide rate was its highest since 1981, ranking it No. 20 among states. That includes only cases where suicide -- not accident, or unnatural causes -- is listed as the cause of death on the death certificate, so experts generally assume the figure is even higher.
And it includes only completed suicides, not attempts. Suicide attempts account for more than 4,000 hospitalizations a year in Tennessee, the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network reports.
Contact Helpline (865-584-4424), which serves the greater Knoxville area, reported a 29 percent increase in calls to its helpline between 2008 and 2009. In 2010, 106 of the 9,721 calls received were from suicidal calls. (The bulk of calls to Contact, 7,580, dealt with ongoing mental health issues.)
Two studies this year reinforced what's long been anecdotal: that suicide rates really do rise during times of economic stress. A massive study of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health data from 1928-2007, published in May's American Journal of Public Health, prompted James Mercy, director of violence prevention for the CDC, to call for increased suicide prevention measures when the economy is weak.
Indeed, Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network's 2010 "Status of Suicide in Tennessee" report acknowledges the need to "reach out to the baby boomers, especially white males, who have suffered from the recent recession (but) have been generally overlooked by the national suicide prevention movement."
It also notes that rural areas deserve more attention because mental health resources are often scarce, while the stigma of using them is entrenched. While Knox County's 2008 suicide rate was on par with the state's overall (but still higher than the national rate), many surrounding counties -- Anderson, Blount, Campbell, Cocke, Grainger, Greene, Monroe, Scott and Sevier -- had higher rates. Union County's suicide rate is more than double the state average.
That translates into more and more people hurt by suicide deaths in rural areas, where there may be less support for them, Lynn said. Because of the guilt and other complicated emotions associated with suicide death, she added, grief "is not a linear thing"; grievers may not deal with it in the same way those who know them expect them to or think they should. She hopes to ultimately expand her group into any area that needs one.
"People need to know how to minister to suicide survivors," not marginalize them, she said. She suggests "letting them know that you haven't forgotten their pain, that they don't have to hide behind a mask to protect you, to keep you from feeling uncomfortable."
The CDC's "Healthy People 2010" goal was a suicide rate of no higher than 5 people per 100,000. With a rate of more than 15 suicides per 100,000 people in 2008, it's understood Tennessee was far from that goal.
"We dare to dream of a day when no one has to die a hopeless, lonely death because no one knew what to say or what to do, or because the help they needed was out of reach," said Scott Ridgeway, executive director of Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network, in the report. "Perhaps no organization in the state of Tennessee is working harder to make itself obsolete."
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