Suicide's sorrow lingers at holidays

Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he? — Guardian angel "Clarence" to George Bailey, who is contemplating suicide on Christmas Eve in the 1947 film "It's a Wonderful Life."

An empty chair at the table. A vacant bedroom that gathers dust. Tears that slowly become invisible except to those who still cry them.

Suicide leaves a unique kind of hole that never seems to be quite filled.

At a time of year many associate not only with joy, but with deepened despair and pain for the suffering, there has grown up a myth that those who die by their own hand do so disproportionately during the holidays.

The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and the Utah Department of Health both report that suicide rates are actually lowest in the winter and highest in the spring.

Yet the timing isn't what matters to those whose own futures have been altered by the irrevocable decision of a loved one. And there are many more of those "walking wounded" than Utahns may realize.

Health department statistics show the state ranks seventh nationally in the proportion of residents who kill themselves. An average of 310 Utahns commit suicide each year; 890 who attempt to do so are hospitalized; and 3,240 are treated in the state's emergency rooms. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for residents ages 10-34, the third leading cause for those 35-44, and the fourth leading cause for those 45-54.

Four times as many males as females take their own lives, but more females make the attempt to do so.

The carnage leaves those in a family-focused culture known for its religious mores not only to deal with the guilt and loneliness that survivors say they suffer, but to wonder about the long-range spiritual implications. Every major faith teaches that life is sacred.

Yet local mental health advocates say 90 percent of those who kill themselves have been diagnosed as mentally ill, with depression and bipolar disorder among the most common diagnoses. Few of those were in treatment at the time they ended their lives, according to Sherri Whittwer, executive director for the Utah chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

She said the organization's continuing education campaign has reached 20,000 Utah clergy in the past four years, the majority of them local leaders for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Suicide is still something of a taboo topic, she said, particularly among many actively religious people.