Thomas Breen photo
Health Equity Fellow Sophie Edelstein and Coordinator of Community Mental Health Initiatives Lorena Mitchell.
Male New Haveners are almost three times more likely to die by suicide — not “commit suicide” — than female city residents.
That’s according to a newly published City of New Haven Suicide Prevention Guide, which through a deep dive into data and a person-focused shift in language seeks to promote better mental health through understanding instead of stigma.
The 20-page report was recently put together by the city’s Office of Community Mental Health Initiatives, a relatively new one-person branch of city government that is led by Lorena Mitchell and that falls under the city’s Department of Community Resilience.
Click here to read the report in full.
The report’s lead authors were Mitchell, who serves as the city’s coordinator of community mental health initiatives; Sophie Edelstein, an East Rock native and Yale School of Public Health student who worked for the city this summer as a health equity fellow; and Department of Community Resilience Executive Director Carlos Sosa-Lombardo.
City of New Haven report
The report includes a wealth of information about suicide in New Haven, including that nine people died by suicide in the city in 2022, a drop from 12 in 2021 and 13 in 2020; that 5.3 percent of emergency department “suicidal ideation visits” between December 2021 and November 2022 were for children under the age of 18; that 76 percent of suicide deaths in New Haven between 2018 and 2022 occurred among people ages 25 to 64; and that men in New Haven are nearly three times more likely to die by suicide than women.
The report isn’t just a collection of numbers. Far from it.
It also spotlights the warning signs of “self-directed violence,” including “Suicidal Desire: a person may wish they were dead or they could fall asleep and never wake up,” and “Preparatory Behaviors: Acts that communicate someone may be thinking about self-harm that is suicidal such as buying a gun or writing a suicide note.”
It lists a host of different helplines one can reach out to when in the midst of a mental-health crisis, including 211, the national suicide prevention lifeline 988, the crisis text line 741741, the Trevor Project’s LGBTQIA+ service, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline, among others.
And it includes descriptions and links for behavioral health programs that can help right here in New Haven, including Elm City COMPASS, CT Mental Health Center Mobile Crisis & Evaluation Unit, Alternatives to Suicide, Fair Haven Community Health Center, and Cornell Scott Hill Health Center.
Motivating every page of this report is the conviction that the best way to address suicide — to keep New Haveners alive and healthy — is to talk about mental health crises, not ignore them. The report seeks to topple any remaining taboos around talking about suicide by recognizing that self-harm exists, and a first step towards prevention is recognition of that reality.
“A common misperception is that talk of suicide can induce thoughts of suicide,” reads an opening page of the report. “The fact, however, is that talking about suicide in a culturally aware manner can actually reduce thoughts of suicide (Dazzi et al., 2014).”
In that vein, the report is not just a data dump about suicide. It is also a reflection on how to talk about the issue, with the goal of putting people first and not blaming those who struggle with their mental health.
“The words we use to talk about suicide matter,” the report reads. “In the last two decades, public health practitioners and suicide prevention advocates have made a deliberate effort to change the language used to discuss suicide. The use of trauma-informed, non-stigmatizing language helps foster a safe and understanding environment to discuss suicide and encourages those experiencing thoughts of suicide to seek help.”
And so, the report recommends using terms like “died by suicide” instead of “committed suicide,” and “died as the result of self-inflicted injury” instead of “chose to kill him/herself.”
Thomas Breen photo
During an interview with the Independent in Mitchell’s ground-floor office in the Community Services Administration wing of City Hall, Mitchell and Edelstein talked through the big-picture goals and underlying numbers of this city-published report, the first of its kind in New Haven.
They also discussed how this fits in with Mitchell’s office’s ongoing work. The work does not include providing direct services like therapy, but is rather focused on “setting the tone and culture around mental health in New Haven,” as Mitchell put it — through Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR) trainings at local library branches and 988 mental-health-crisis-hotline sign postings across the city and a new Office of Community Mental Health Initiatives email newsletter.
Mitchell described suicide as “a topic that is difficult to talk about,” “uncomfortable,” and something that too many people have been touched by through a family member or friend. This report seeks to provide the “tools to talk about [suicide]” in an evidence-based way and in “a really local way.”
“There’s no one-size-fits-all” approach to addressing suicide, Mitchell continued. Thus this report’s wealth of referenced resources.
Mitchell and Edelstein recognized that the data included in this report almost certainly reflects an underrepresentation of suicide’s impact on the New Haven community. That speaks to the challenges of collecting data about suicide — at emergency departments, by police, and, perhaps most saliently, when a drug overdose may also be an act of self-inflicted harm.
They said that the city plans to distribute these newly printed reports to “partners across the city,” including many listed in the report itself, as well as to libraries and the school district’s office of social and emotional learning.
“The message” of this report, Mitchell said, is not to despair. Rather, it is “hope. You are not alone.” That other people also struggle with suicidal ideation and behavior, and that there are people and programs in New Haven looking to help.