The reason for the high suicide rate in the Rocky Mountain West always has been elusive.
“I don’t think anybody can really explain it,” said James Earle, chairman of the Suicide Prevention Coalition of Colorado, which estimates deaths by suicide in the state at about 700 a year.
But this month, as Colorado prepares for the spectacle of launching Hunter S. Thompson’s remains over the Rockies in a tribute to one of the state’s most celebrated suicide victims, Earle is hoping to counter the inevitable media circus with a message of concern.
“We’ve got to spread the word about prevention,” he said.
Lives are at stake.
Earle, who lost a son to suicide, said the real picture of suicide in Colorado is not one of drama and celebrity.
In fact, it’s anything but glamorous.
In 90 percent of cases, it is the tragic end to a life plagued by mental illness. Often that illness could have been successfully treated if only the person had access to care.
Colorado’s suicide rate is seventh in the nation, 36 percent above the national average. And though former Gov. Roy Romer announced an ambitious suicide-prevention strategy in 1998, it was never fully implemented because of a lack of funding.
Then, over the past three years, state funding for mental health care has been slashed by 30 percent, and many private insurers, faced with rapidly increasing costs of health care, have reduced coverage for mental health treatment.
So Earle, along with mental health professionals and suicide-prevention advocates, are taking matters into their own hands. They are seeking donations to support outreach programs in the schools, training sessions for counselors and a range of suicide-prevention efforts across the state.
Actress Mariette Hartley will speak at the coalition’s annual fundraiser Aug. 25. (Call 303-377-3040 for information.)
Hartley said it took her two decades to come to grips with her father’s suicide.
She still remembers the sound of the shot in the next room.
“We rushed him to the emergency room, and then we cleaned up the mess,” she said.
She was 23.
Her mother was so ashamed, she urged the family to keep the suicide a secret. The obituary in the local newspaper collaborated in the subterfuge. Her father’s death was attributed to natural causes.
“There was a tremendous stigma,” Hartley said, and that stigma isolated them from the kind of support they desperately needed. The conspiracy of silence inhibited them from really grieving.
Finally, in 1984, when she took a role as a mother whose son commits suicide in the made-for-TV movie “Silence of the Heart,” the dam broke.
She met the woman she was to portray and unexpectedly unleashed the emotions she had kept in check for so long.
“A deep, powerful epiphany occurred,” she said.
She agreed to join the suicide-prevention movement and reluctantly began speaking about her father’s struggle with mental illness, his death and its impact on the family.
At first she was so frightened about stirring up those emotions, “they would literally hold me up behind the lectern,” she said. “But then I saw the response.”
People were empowered by her understanding and empathy.
“They finally had the words said for them that for so long they couldn’t bring themselves to say,” she said. Now the work “is rewarding beyond measure.”
Earle said with such limited state support for suicide prevention, the coalition relies on money from grants, private foundations, contributions and dues from members.
The nonprofit tries to compensate for its limited resources with a powerful commitment to the cause – a cause most members came to through searing personal experience, just as Hartley did.
They’re determined to save lives by educating people about suicide, she said.
“Many of us get to heaven by backing away from hell.”
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
