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Suicide in Darke
County
By Bob Rhoades
Wikipedia says that Suicide is the act of a human being intentionally
causing his or her own death. Almost every reference book that
you can find suicide discussed in says that it is caused at least by
despair. Beyond that some of the other contributing factors are
depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism and drug abuse.
They all also agree that financial difficulties, troubles with
interpersonal relationships and other undesirable situations play a
significant role.
Imagine that! It sort of looks like any one or a combination of any of
them could happen to just about anyone these days. Suicide doesn’t
happen in many other species. It happens in some ant populations
and a few other bugs mostly when they or their colony is
threatened. While it appears that it may happen in a few other
species, no conclusive research has never been done, just humans.
So are we keeping a stiff upper lip? Are we ahead of the curve
here in Darke County? Do we not have any of these problems or are
we just tougher than people who live elsewhere? Probably
not! Probably were not even tougher than people in our
neighboring counties.
A week ago when I started writing this I asked Sheriff Spencer if the
dispatching system could do analysis on something like this. In a
couple of days he sent me the shocking statistics. Since the
middle of October, 54 people in Darke County have attempted
suicide. Three were successful. There was another over the
weekend and yet another yesterday. This means that every three
days since October, one of your neighbors has attempted to take their
own life. I asked a couple of people in other counties and while
they said they have a steady stream of suicides, none had as many as
Darke.
So what’s going on here? Do tempers flare because we sometimes
run out of money? Do we have problems because our job went away
and there is none to replace it? Does all of this cause some of
us to drink a bit more to ease the pain?
According to a report compiled by the Ohio Department of Health in
2008, almost 12% of us had no health insurance. During 2004-2007
in Darke County, 23.3 percent of adult residents reported being current
cigarette smokers, 35.1 percent were overweight and 26 percent were
obese. Each of these factors increases the risk of developing a
chronic disease for Darke County. Wonder if it affects the thinking of
a person when one or all of the problems listed above occur.
Heart disease and high blood pressure seem to also be rampant in this
county.
It seems that we have a pretty good life here. We’re only $1600
below the median salary of other people in the Buckeye State, not too
bad an average. We sit at 48 out of 88 counties in
population. The most recent statistics from 2006 show heart
disease and cancer as the two leading causes of death. Stroke was
the third cause of death. The stats also show that 78.2 percent
of us don’t eat enough fruit each day. Thirty Five percent of us
are overweight.
The report also showed that during the period of 2004-2006 In 2005,
more than 32,000 suicides occurred in the United States (CDC, 2007).
During 2004-2006, an average of 8 Darke County residents died each year
from suicide. Although females attempt suicide at higher
rates, males take their lives four times more often than females (CDC,
2007) and white adult males are at the greatest risk of committing
suicide in Ohio.
In Ohio, firearms are used in approximately half of the completed
suicides and males (54 percent firearm related) are much more likely
than females (29 percent firearm related) to commit suicide using a
firearm. With these stats from a couple of years ago in mind, it
appears that we’re way ahead of that in 2011. With three
completed suicides already in May and an attempt rate of one every
three days, it doesn’t look to promising.
I wonder if anyone is looking into it? Wonder if anyone cares?
Sources: ODH:
http://www.healthyohioprogram.org/comprofiles/darke.pdf, Darke
County Dispatch DCSO, Toby Spencer. Wikipedia, WebMD
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