By Dean Rudloff
The Lake County Mental Health Task Force
The North Shore Mental Health Group
We all have mental health and it’s as essential to a person’s life as physical health. Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act, and shapes how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. All too often, individuals struggling with their mental health issues find themselves thinking about ending their life by their own means.
In the US, with the most current information available, the CDC reports that when asked about suicide, 12.8 million adults said they have seriously thought about it; 3.7 million said they have made a suicide plan for themselves; and 1.5 million have attempted suicide. More to the point, the CDC reported that in 2023, over 49,000 individuals died by suicide, noting one death every 11 minutes. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIH) reported that there were two times as many suicides (49,476) as there were homicides (24,849).
Closer to home, deaths by suicide in Minnesota have reportedly increased by 51% over the past 20 years, with a reported number of 812 deaths in 2023, ranking suicide as the 8th leading cause of death, and Minnesota ranking 10th in the nation with 860 deaths according to the North American Community Hub (NCH). The MN Dept. of Health reports that in 2024, the rate of MN suicides was at 13.9 per 100k.
Demographically, it is reported that the highest rate of suicide occurs with individuals: ages 85+, among males, among non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaska natives, and among people living in a remote area, according to the NCH.
In this first publication, you have been given some data coming from a number of sources on the state of suicide. Hopefully, this gets us to begin again thinking about suicide so that we will be ready to learn more about its prevention and our mental health in forthcoming issues of the Northshore Journal.
