The Horrific Toll of Depression: Suicides Linked to Recession, As Budget Cuts Force Out Mental Healt

[Jkid]

In late 2009, as the unemployment rate in San Joaquin County, California, reached 18 percent and one in twelve homes were being foreclosed, two high school students in the town of Ripon, population 15,000, committed suicide within two months of each other. Over the next eighteen months, sixteen more teenagers around the county took their own lives, a not-uncommon occurrence that public health researchers refer to as “suicide contagion.”

Years of declining budgets had cut the number of counselors, nurses and psychologists in county schools, impairing the ability of individual districts to handle the needs of grieving students, parents and communities on their own. So school officials in cities like Ripon, Stockton, Lodi and Linden turned to each other for help.

The districts made use of a mutual aid pact they’d set up, like those employed by firefighters and police from the same region. On the morning after each death, school nurses and counselors trained in suicide response, along with a team of therapists from Valley Community Counseling, a local mental health agency, descended on the school the student had attended. They spent days, sometimes weeks, meeting with pupils and parents, focusing on kids who knew the victims or seemed at particular risk.

The spirit of cooperation helped the team fashion an effective crisis response and ease the pain of some survivors, said David Love, executive director of Valley Community Counseling. But, by definition, it came too late, he said. “We’re doing everything we can to partner and develop these mutual aid plans,’’ Love said. “But we’re still band-aiding. When you’re doing crisis work, you’re at the back end. The tragedy is that we don’t have the resources early in the process.”

More here: http://www.alternet.org/story/153747/the_horrific_toll_of_depression%3A_suicides_linked_to_recession%2C_as_budget_cuts_force_out_mental_health_professionals?page=entire

...and with underfunded mental health workers there will be more people giving out shitty advice for depression, which leads to more suicides AND worsening conditions.

[libodem]

1. Life is cheap these days

Unless you are a fetus in the uterus, then your rights at least trump the life of the mother.

The government could care less if you off yourself, especially if you were a soldier.

[BrendaBrick]

2. Horrific is right

and these appalling statistics get little to no attention. Thanks for posting this Jkid.