State and local suicide data reviewed during meeting

After a steady decline, Minnesota's suicide rate is on the rise again -- and Beltrami County is not immune.

A state Department of Health study released this fall shows that Beltrami County, from 1990 to 2005, had the second-highest suicide rate overall in Minnesota and the highest suicide rate for people between the ages of 5 and 34.

On Wednesday, the Health Department's Jon Roesler reviewed state and Beltrami County data from the study during a meeting of the Headwaters Alliance for Suicide Prevention in Bemidji. Roesler is an epidemiologist supervisor for the agency's Injury and Violence Prevention Unit.

"The rates were higher in the mid-to-late-'90s, dropped way down and are now on the way up," Roesler said. "There's something going on in our society. I'm not sure what."

He said Beltrami County had 11 suicides last year -- the same number of suicides in 1997 in the county. The number of suicides in the county between 1998 and 2003 ranged from four to eight each year. The county had 10 suicides in 2004 and 13 in 2005.

So far this year, Roesler said the number of suicides in Beltrami County is down.

He said Beltrami County had a greater proportion of youth suicides from 1990 to 2005 compared to the state. The county also had a greater proportion of males and American Indians committing suicide compared to the state in the same 15-year period.

Of the people who died from suicide in Minnesota from 1990 to 2005, 94 percent were white and 2 percent were American Indian, Roesler said. During the same time in Beltrami County, 61 percent of those who died from suicide were white and 39 percent were American Indian.

Comparing the two, Roesler said the rate of suicide among American Indians in Beltrami County was about 80 percent higher than the suicide rate for American Indians in the state as a whole.

Also, he said the suicide rate among whites in Beltrami County was about 30 percent higher during the same period than the suicide rate for whites in the state as a whole.

Despite some year-to-year variability, the study shows increasing trends in non-fatal, hospital-treated, self-inflicted harm from 1990 to 2005 in Beltrami County. Also, the state overall saw a gradual increase in non-fatal, hospital-treated, self-inflicted harm.

"It's really being driven by females," Roesler said.

Throughout the state, 40 percent of people with non-fatal, self-inflicted harm were treated in emergency rooms and released while about 60 percent were hospitalized, Roesler said. In Beltrami County, he said, it's reversed.

The suicide data in the Health Department study is based on death certificates and the non-fatal, self-inflicted harm data is based on information from the Minnesota Hospital Association, which does not include federal facilities.

Since the department released its study in September, Roesler said some false positives were found in Beltrami County's data. But, he said, he has no evidence at this time that the data for other counties would be without false positives.

He said the agency also found that a significant proportion -- roughly half -- of the youth in Beltrami County who had non-fatal suicide attempts had alcohol or marijuana in their system at the time.

A report on an abstract now underway of the study should be completed by late winter or early spring, Roesler said.