Worcester Business Journal

Facing the dark side of mental health As suicide rates spike, local mental health organizations struggle to provide enough services to meet demand BY GRANT WELKER Worcester Business Journal News Editor T he bad news came all at once, especially for those working in mental health. In the span of a week in June, TV chef Anthony Bourdain and designer Kate Spade died of suicides, and a Centers for Disease Control and Preven- tion report brought to light a long and troubling trend: Suicide rates rose by 25 per- cent from 1999 to 2016, and the jump in Massachusetts was even worse. e report wasn't exactly big news for those who have been working to treat mental illness. "at's pretty consistent with what we've seen organi- zationally," said Kate Adams, the director of mental health for the Harrington HealthCare System in Southbridge. Yet, as mental health providers in Central Massachusetts have expand- ed services to deal with this growing need – psychiatry is now the largest department at Harrington Hospital in Southbridge – they bump up against a capacity strained by funding and staffing limits, leaving patients to have to wait for services. "It's really a travesty," said Justin Looser, the executive director for be- havioral health at MetroWest Medical Center and Saint Vincent Hospital. "If it were any other diagnosis, we wouldn't stand for it." But mental health service providers are hoping the deaths of Bourdain and Spade have shown even successful, wealthy and famous people can struggle with mental health, and depression doesn't spare any group of people. "We haven't done enough to reduce the stigma of seeking mental health ser- vices," said Barry Feldman, a psychiatry professor at UMass Medical School. e talk about the need to address the region, state and nation's struggles with opioids have been widespread and led to new government task forces and seminars for health and business pro- fessionals, but discussion about mental health and suicide is more subdued, Feldman said, calling the CDC report "a clear indication of what we're doing isn't working." "When suicide comes up, people get really anxious about the topic," Feldman said. Troubling trends Suicide rates in Massachusetts rose by 35 percent from 1999 to 2016, according to the CDC report. In a silver lining, Massachusetts had the third-lowest national rate in the past three years, with 10 suicides per 100,000 people. With a Massachusetts pop- ulation of nearly 7 million, that equates to roughly 680 people who have died of suicide in those years. "It's always shocking to see something like that on paper," said Looser. Calls to Samaritans, a nonprofit who helps those with mental illness and their loved ones, saw nearly a doubling in call volume in the weekend after the CDC report and Spade and Bourdain's suicides, said Steve Mongeau, the Samaritans executive director. Many of those were from people who said they were concerned about a loved one, he said. Samaritans, which holds support groups in Framingham and Worces- ter, is known for its suicide help line, which it expanded in early 2016 to include text messaging. More than 12,000 text conversations have been recorded since, Mongeau said, including a record high 600 in June. "The silver lining was that the mes- sage was getting out that we need to help one another," Mongeau said. Nearly 45,000 Americans took their lives in 2016, with the suicide rate consistent among both all sexes and racial and ethnic groups, according to the CDC. There is no consensus among doc- tors for what could be fueling the rise in suicides. The report suggested warning signs may not have been present in many suicide cases. Of those who have died of suicide, 54 percent were not known to have had a mental health condition. "You're always kind of scratching the surface," said Adams from Har- rington. "There's always the need out there." Designer Kate Spade died by suicide on June 5. 10 Worcester Business Journal | July 23, 2018 | wbjournal.com Chef Anthony Bourdain, here accepting the 2014 Peabody Award for his TV show "Parts Unknown," died by suicide on June 8. PHOTO/PEABODY AWARDS

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