Blog Note: This article refers to a 2016 Humboldt County Grand Jury Report near end of article.
IN
SUMMARY
Humboldt
County, tucked into the redwoods on the state’s far North Coast, also has a
much higher suicide rate than most of California. The pandemic has fueled new
concerns.
Celinda
Gonzales has a long list of worries: She worries about COVID-19, which recently
spiked near the Yurok reservation where she lives in Humboldt County. She
worries about the wildfires threatening her remote, forested town, Weitchpec.
She worries about gill rot and algae blooms in the Klamath and Trinity rivers,
which join together just over the hill from her trailer; she worries, too,
about what the resulting small salmon runs mean for her financially struggling
community.
And
she worries about the prospect of more suicides.
“It’s
very hard to stay mentally strong right now,” she said.
For
several years, Gonzales, 53, has worked in suicide prevention in the northwestern
corner of California, famous for its rocky coastlines and breathtaking forests.
It carries the burden of another reputation – about 2 and a half times as many
of Humboldt’s residents die by suicide per capita as the rest of the state.
That
weight is felt across this county of 135,000, as well as in many neighboring
rural counties, where mental health providers are in short supply.
Now,
in this region and across the state, the pressures of the pandemic and economic
downturn, compounded by racial tensions and climate-change-fueled megafires,
are amplifying that concern. Gun sales are up nationally, including in
California, according to a recent FBI report on firearm background checks.
Experts worry substance use here may also be increasing. Individually, these
factors are stressors; together, they’re a powder keg.
“We
are very concerned about the layering of multiple stresses on the people of
California,” said Jim Kooler, assistant deputy director of the state Department
of Health Care Services’ behavioral health division. He describes the current
moment as having “challenges on top of challenges that we’ve never had to face
before.”
Adding
to these challenges: The state has a decentralized public mental health system,
which can make a concerted statewide effort to address suicide even more
challenging.
A
bill to create a statewide Office of Suicide Prevention was signed into law
last Friday by Gov. Gavin Newsom. But there was a big caveat: At this point,
there’s no money for it.
Meanwhile,
pressure is building. Mental health leaders in the state are now commonly
defaulting to the word “tsunami” to describe a predicted onslaught of mental
health needs and suicides, which many believe will last long after any vaccine
is distributed.
Historical
precedent amplifies this sense of urgency. In the years following the last
recession, an estimated 4,750 more Americans than projected died by suicide,
according to an analysis published in The
Lancet.
Nationally,
rates of anxiety have already tripled and rates of depression have quadrupled
compared to a year ago, according to a report by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. One especially sobering finding: More than a quarter of
the nation’s 18- to 24-year-olds reported seriously considering suicide in the
last 30 days.
Monthly
calls to a suicide prevention crisis hotline run by Sacramento-based WellSpace
Health, which serves much of the state, almost doubled this year compared to a
year earlier — up from a little more than 3,000 for June 2019 to almost 6,000
in June 2020.
“The
psychological impact of COVID cannot be underestimated,” said Jonathan Porteus,
WellSpace’s chief executive officer.
One
of the main words he said they hear from callers: “hopeless.”
A
county searches for answers
Humboldt’s
high suicide rate can be traced to a combination of factors: gun ownership, low
median incomes and the precipitous decline of work in the logging,
construction, fisheries and manufacturing sectors, mental health leaders there
say. Heavy opioid and prescription drug use is also a key element — the
county’s overdose death rate is often more than triple the statewide average,
according to a county report, and is especially high in the Native American
community.
For
Native American residents like Celinda Gonzales, who make up more than 6% of
the county’s population, historical and ongoing trauma and suffering are also
significant, said Virgil Moorehead, a clinical psychologist and executive
director of Two Feathers Native American Family Services.
“I
don’t want to frame it as a mental illness,” he said. “I would frame it more as
existential despair.”
After Gonzales’ son, and then her brother,
took their lives, she realized that suicide prevention would be her life’s
work. “We have to talk about it, it’s reality and we have to address it, and
how do we help,” Gonzales said. Photo by Alexandra Hootnick for CalMatters.
Access
to mental health services in Humboldt County is a problem, too, said Dr. Robert
Soper, who heads a countywide behavioral health consortium he started five
years ago. Soper, 71, said he is the only private psychiatrist left in the
county. For years there were five, he said, but as his colleagues retired, no
one replaced them. Being so remote from major cities makes it difficult to
recruit, he said.
“If
I could find someone good, I would have them in a heartbeat,” he said. “They
would be full before they walked in the door.”
In 2016, the county’s
civil grand jury received several complaints about the county’s mental health
branch, with staff and local mental health advocates reporting “dysfunctional
work guidelines, distrustful working relationships, unresponsive upper
management, mass resignations, and an unsupportive work environment.” In its
investigation, the grand jury found the county’s behavioral health board had
done little to improve those conditions.
The
county’s behavioral health director, Emi Botzler-Rodgers, told CalMatters her
office has been “working diligently to change our branch culture” and improve
staff morale. And Soper notes another important development: the county now has
a mobile crisis team that can quickly evaluate people.
Two
years ago, health officials in Eureka, the county seat, decided to make a
concerted effort to address the county’s high suicide rate.
CalMatters
BY JOCELYN WIENER
September 30, 2020
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