Coming to grips with suicide: Alaska's rate among highest in nation despite efforts to heal communities

News-Miner opinion: The death of Anthony Choquette earlier this month at the Denai’na Center came as a catastrophic punctuation mark to a conversation about suicide that took place throughout the Alaska Federation of Natives’ annual convention in Anchorage. Perhaps that was the plan; perhaps it was coincidence. As with many aspects of Alaska’s suicide issue, it’s difficult to know for sure. While efforts to combat the problem have ramped up in recent years, it’s clear there’s still a long way to go.

Unlike health issues that have risen to prominence in recent years, such as heart disease and stroke, suicide has long been an epidemic with which Alaska has grappled. For many years, the state led the U.S. in per capita suicides, with 21.8 suicides per 100,000 residents in 2007 — nearly double the national average. More recently, Alaska has dropped from the top spot but not because of local progress. A heartening drop to 19.8 suicides per 100,000 residents was followed by a jump back to 23 suicides per 100,000 residents in 2012, and that number climbed further to 23.3 per 100,000 in 2013, the most recent year for which data from the American Association of Suicidology is available. The reason Alaska fell from its perch atop the ranking is that in recent years, a handful of other Western states such as Wyoming and Montana saw their rates spike even more dramatically.

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