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Native Americans Struggle with Suicide Epidemic
Today's Native youths, tomorrow's Native leaders are caught in a suicidal
epidemic that is claiming more lives than any other ethnic group.
Native youths kill themselves at a rate nearly twice the national average,
according to the Centers for Disease Control. In its most recent study, from
1996 to 1998, the CDC found 303 Native youths up to 24 years old took their own
lives.
About one in five Native girls have attempted suicide, compared to about 12
percent of boys, according to the American Medical Association. Boys, however,
were five times more likely to complete suicide.
In the Great Plains, about 18 Native youths per 100,000 committed suicide
from 1985 to 1996 a rate six times the national average for 19-year-olds and
younger.
The reasons are many. Experts point to depression, isolation, substance
abuse, broken families, the pain of historical tragedies and a lack of mental
health support on rural reservations.
The results, though, are tragic.
"Its an enormous problem," said Spero Manson of American Indian-Alaskan
Native Programs at the University of Colorado. "To lose our youth threatens our
sense of continuity to be able to live in the future."
But across Indian Country, grass-roots groups committed to solving the
suicide problem are taking action. They're teaching kids to embrace their
identity. They're teaching women to heal families. And they're giving help when
it's needed the most when no future looks brighter than any future at all.
Nov 26 2001 Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
http://www.geocities.com/honoryourspirit/nasuicide.html
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