Mental Fitness Minute: Do most people who die by suicide have a mental illness?

On March 16, a grassroots committee hosted the Worland Mental Fitness Fair at the Worland Community Center.

Members of the panel were Dr. Ralph Louis, psychologist from Oxbow Counseling in Basin; Janae Harman, owner of Family Circle Counseling in Worland; Mary Johnson, CEO of Oxbow Counseling in Worland; and Carol Bell, provisionally licensed therapist at Foundations Counseling in Cody.

The panel answered prepared questions that came from the committee and from similar events in Shell, Greybull and Cowley.

The Northern Wyoming News will be covering the questions on a weekly basis throughout the next several weeks.

Do most people who die by suicide have a mental illness?

Louis: Yes. However, it might not be what you think.

It seems like with suicide, it’s more about the running out of options kind of feeling, the helplessness, the stress of not knowing where to turn next, or where to go next, or what to do, and feeling like there is no other path. You’re kind of up a blind alley.

Lots of mental illnesses can help a person reach that point. So it’s not just depression.

It’s often things in life that happen and causes trauma for the person. And that trauma becomes something that seems so overwhelming that they can’t see a way past it. And that might not even be a mental illness that might be just a blindness to seeing a path ahead.

And so while yes, it is true. You can’t say that because a person has a mental illness, they’re more likely to [die by] suicide, because we know that people have had [died by] suicide, when there was no indication of mental illness, as well.

Part 2: What happens if I go for help because I’m thinking about suicide?

Harman: The first thing that I do is, is we assess how imminent that suicidal plan is. And we make a safety plan.

It doesn’t necessarily mean immediate hospitalization so often, that we want to make sure that the resources that you have will support you; that you can continue on; that we make enough of a plan to maintain safety.

That’s the first thing. If it feels more imminent than that and that the safety plan is not going to be enough. Then we do look at a 72-hour hold.

Louis: What does it mean when a person is imminent risk? It’s a clinical judgment, it means that you have done your assessment, and you believe that if you let this person go, they may die. And you make the judgment on, how do you help that person from this point forward. So that either they can go and you don’t have to worry about them dying, or you find help for them, so that they’re in a restricted environment to where they can’t harm themselves.

If anybody tells you that they can 100% determine and predict when someone’s going to hurt themselves, they’re either fooling themselves or trying to fool you. Because we aren’t able to do that. We just make a judgment. And the judgment is based on what’s in the best interest of this person who’s struggling and sitting in front of us.

Next week’s question: How do you help someone who has an alcohol or drug addiction?