Link – Silent suffering: Suicide is preventable, rarely discussed | The Columbus Dispatch

It’s the 10th-leading cause of death, but you’ll almost never see it mentioned in an obituary.

It kills as many people as breast cancer nationally, but it’s not recognizable by a ribbon or race.

In Ohio, it claims a life every seven hours.

Experts say this is 100 percent preventable. We can stop these deaths.

But we haven’t.

Like cancer in the 1960s and AIDS in the 1980s, suicide is a public-health crisis — one whose victims largely have been ignored by lawmakers, medical professionals and much of the public.

“These are the forgotten people,” said Jan Gorniak, the former Franklin County coroner who now is the deputy chief medical examiner in Washington, D.C. “It doesn’t make the newspaper, and it’s not on TV. We could save lives if we just talked about it. Mental-health problems are real, and we can’t ignore it any longer.”

The interesting thing in this article is the number of suicides and the actual details that have been tracked. The details are heartbreaking, and we clearly are not doing enough to make it easier for people who need help to get it. Not having enough resources is one problem, but so is the humiliation you might be subject to if you ask for help. Individually we might not be able to do a whole lot about the resources, though we should try, but we sure as heck can make ourselves available to support those with mental health issues instead of stigmatizing them.

Silent suffering: Suicide is preventable, rarely discussed | The Columbus Dispatch