COLORADO SPRINGS — A report by a national city and county association finds Colorado Springs had the second-highest suicide rate in the nation in 2004.
The report by the National Association of County & City Health Officials examined suicide rates from 2004 in the 54 largest urban areas in the United States. It found that 26 out of every 100,000 people in Colorado Springs killed themselves. The rate in No. 1 Las Vegas was nearly 35 per 100,000.
Tucson was third with a rate of 25 per 100,000.
Health officials aren’t sure what is behind the numbers.
The report, titled “2007 Big Cities Inventory: The Health of Urban America,” found that in 2004, 121 people died by suicide in El Paso County, according to the El Paso County Department of Health and Environment. That number dropped to 69 in 2006.
“I think it’s a very significant public-health issue,” said Dr. Bernadette Albanese, the county’s medical director, who was also part of the report’s editorial board.
Albanese said suicide ranks as the seventh-leading cause of death in El Paso County.
Davida Hoffman, a social worker and director of the Child and Family Network for Pikes Peak Mental Health, said teens with suicidal tendencies are a regular part of her caseload.
“This is a very mobile community; people come and go here very frequently,” she said. “When you don’t have the family to help you when times get tough, . . . most people don’t turn to professionals, they turn to their family.”
