Suicides across NAN reach ‘staggering’ numbers

The numbers of confirmed and attempted suicides in Nishnawbe Aski Nation have reached “staggering” numbers, a group of Canadian Forces instructors attending a suicide prevention course were told.
Staff Sgt. Dan MacLeod, an OPP officer seconded to the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service, told the soldiers there have been at least 425 confirmed suicide deaths in NAN since 1986.
“It’s staggering,” he said. “The number could very well be higher because not all confirmed suicides are recorded as suicides. Some deaths are listed as accidental…
“In that same time period, since 1986, there have been thousands of attempted suicides. I think the last figure I looked at, up to 2004, was an estimated 4,000 attempts. Some are not reported and that figure has not been updated in nearly six years, so I think it’s much higher.”
Youth were disproportionately represented in the suicide statistics he showed the soldiers, who were instructors with 3rd Canadian Ranger Patrol Group, which commands the 500 Canadian Rangers and 600 Junior Canadian Rangers in northern Ontario.
Of the 425 confirmed suicides, 57 were aged 10 to 14, 174 were 15 to 20, and 67 were 21 to 25 years old. In total, there were 298 confirmed suicides for youth aged 10 to 25. They accounted for 73 per cent of the deaths – or three out of every four.
Hanging accounted for three quarters of the deaths, followed by gunshot and overdoses. Male victims outnumbered females by a ratio of two to one.
About two-thirds of NAN’s population of about 46,000 is under the age of 26, the age group that accounts for most of NAN’s suicides.
“We face a huge problem with youth suicide,” said NAN Grand Chief Stan Beardy. “Our population is growing rapidly. It could double or triple in 10 years time. That’s a lot of young people. There is the potential for a lot more young people coming into our population in a little while.”
He said the main cause for the high suicide rate remains the effects felt from residential schools.
“The greatest cause of suicides is when people feel unwanted, feel nobody cares,” he said. “It’s a direct result of parents and grandparents growing up in residential schools, where they never learned proper human interactions, they never learned coping mechanisms, they never learned how to communicate or body language.”
But loss of cultural identity is also a prime contributor, he said.
“We need to reconnect our young people through their culture and through land-based training and teach them about the spirituality that has sustained our people for thousands of years.”
In addition, he said, workshops need to be established to develop parenting skills lost through the impact of residential schools.
“We all need to know that somebody cares for us, that somebody loves us, that we are important,” he said. “The large body of our young people are lost psychologically because the parental bonding is not there between the parents and their children.”
MacLeod said communities with a strong connection to Aboriginal spirituality and traditional ceremonies often have lower suicide rates than communities that do not. Communities that adopt spirituality and traditional ceremonies frequently see a drop in their suicide numbers.
About 80 per cent of people contemplating suicide give direct and indirect signals that can be picked up. They include unusual comments about suicide, signs of extreme personal unhappiness and hopelessness and varieties of abnormal behaviour.
“If you are not aware of those signs and what to look for they can pass unnoticed and the person may become a statistic of a completed suicide,” he said. “If you recognize those signs the best thing to do is to ask the person if they are thinking of committing suicide. But it has to be a direct question.”
If the answer is yes, he said, then the correct thing to do is to get help from the appropriate person in the community – a mental health worker, a nurse at the nursing station, or, if the threat is imminent, from the police.
“One secret you cannot keep is a serious disclosure that a person is going to commit suicide,” he said. “You cannot keep that secret. You must get them help.
“If we can get people the help they need, get them working on a better life, raise their self esteem, bring back their pride in being a First Nations person, we can move them away from being suicidal and they can lead perfectly normal lives.”
Capt. Caryl Fletcher, the officer commanding the Junior Canadian Rangers in northern Ontario, said the soldiers who took the suicide prevention course, at a training site near the Muskoka village of Dorset, visit communities in NAN on a regular basis.
“Our instructors were not being trained to be social workers,” he said, “but we want them to be able to assist when they need to.
“They have already saved the lives of two Junior Canadian Rangers in the past year by getting them the help they needed and the two youth have thanked them for what they did. They are grateful for them saving their lives.
“The suicide prevention training, we hope, will leave them better educated on all aspects of suicide and better able to assist and direct people with suicide issues to the proper personnel in the community who are better able to deal with it. We want them to be able to recognize the signals and to help get people help. We want to help save lives.”
Sgt. Peter Moon is the public affairs ranger for 3rd Canadian Ranger Patrol Group at Canadian Forces Base Borden. See www.canadianrangers.ca