Suicide in Rural Washington

Overexplained? So what?

Is suicide overexplained? By this, I mean do we load all of society’s ills into explaining suicide. Do we have any real explanation at all?  The “despair” in the “deaths of despair” certainly captures our imagination of probable causes…economy, social breakdown, substance abuse, racism, gender role upheavals, genetic determinism, and so on.

The tragedy of suicide can get lost in our convergence on whatever social theory is in fashion. Suicide usually comes with few warning signs. It is distressingly democratic. Young people, old folks, brown, black, red and white, men and women, suicide does not discriminate. It marks families for generations. Hopes are dashed. Guilt explodes.

Or so we say, because we can say a lot and it can sound plausible. So, let’s push the data as far as we can before jumping to conclusions. Let’s measure what we can measure before we turn to speculation.

Let’s also try to identify in the data anything distinctive about suicide in our rural communities. Is there something in the frequency, rates, demographics, use of firearms in rural suicide?

We should also talk about what we can do to reduce suicide rates without fully knowing why people take their lives. We know that engagement helps, I think, and that limiting access to guns and drugs helps. Or am I just projecting my social agenda?

Join Cassidy Brewin in conversation Thursday to learn about suicide in rural Washington. Cassidy will start us with the facts and we undoubtedly will move to well-meaning speculation.

Deaths of Despair – Suicide in Rural Washington?

What are “deaths of despair”?  Drugs, alcohol, and suicide.

And “despair”? By definition, mental health is the proximate cause. Behind the mental health, though, lies real economic decline, relative loss of economic position, and perceived loss of  economic status.

Despair sounds too much like white, male Americans chewed up by American capitalism….a big helping of unemployment and economic stress topped off by a bit of racism and gender anxiety.

So what about suicide in rural Washington? Rural Washington has the objective conditions for despair.* We have low educational attainment, high unemployment, low economic earnings, and poor physical health. These objective conditions only go so far. It is the perception that you are not doing well when others, and other groups, are doing better. It is the perception that for the first time you cannot imagine your children doing better than you or certainly their grandparents. It is the perception that there is no way out and that others are winning while you are losing.

On the 15^th we are going to talk about suicide in rural Washington with Cassidy Brewin, the suicide prevention specialist with Community Health in Walla Walla. She will give us numbers, ideas behind the numbers, and ways to help.

Spoiler alert – MAGA knows all about despair. Maybe Cassidy will find in the numbers that rural Washington enjoys community “social capital” that muffles the translation of poverty into despair. Stay tuned.

Wolves and Cattle in NE Washington

Data plus the Politics of Administration

Data make a difference. And the data for wolf recovery in NE Washington are impressive. So much so that WDFW staff is recommending to the Commission a downlisting of wolves to “sensitive.” It is now up to the Commission.

What about the politics behind administration? Julia Smith, Endangered Species Recovery Section Manager, Wildlife Program, wrote last October that “the number of livestock producers in Washington implementing proactive, non-lethal deterrence measures has markedly increased. Mitigating livestock depredation by wolves is critical to acceptance of wolves by local communities.”(emphasis added)

It seems that having cooperation on the ground helps move the program ahead.

It is important to report the other side of the political pressure. Ms. Smith was responding to a petition from advocacy groups that WDFW engage in rule-making to govern more precisely non-lethal practices and the rules for lethal removal. She noted that the current petition was the fifth similar petition from the same groups. The previous petition for rule making was endorsed by the governor. WDFW’s subsequent process elicited 10,000 comments. Of a subset of the comments, “SEPA-associated comments…WDFW received over 7,500 written submissions. Over 6,700 of these submissions were copies of or slight variations of one form letter and over 700 submissions were copies of or slight variations of another form letter.”

Back to data: “most wolf packs in Washington are not implicated in livestock depredation (86% on average over 14 years).”

This sounds like good news.

Wolf Management in North East Washington

When we first started looking at wolves and cattle in Stevens and Ferry counties one version of the question was simple: Why should we require cattle operators to lose calves to wolves reintroduced by Puget Sound wildlife advocates? The issue was sharpened by the refusal of the cattle operators to accept compensation for their economic loss because that would mean that they accepted the state’s policy of bringing the wolves back. On the other side, there were claims that cattle operators were deliberately pasturing their herds where they knew they would take losses.

There was mutual hostility between among the bureaucrats, the cattle operators, and the wolf advocates. No one trusted the other.

Where are we now? Has familiarity worn the edges off? Has the policy succeeded?

Just maybe. Just maybe wolf policy in the northern counties is good news. Julia Smith, presenting a Periodic Status Review, declared “Wolves are doing great…The species is gaining population.”

How about the people? How are they doing? Jay Shepard, our guest host, wrote in the Spokesman Review, “This part of the story – collaboration, work and stress – hasn’t made it out to the general public. It’s a story about hard work, tough conversations, and eventual trust and friendships. Not sensational but it’s a remarkable story that needs telling.”

He writes “we are working on potential paths forward, paths that include both cattle and wolves.”