Last Tuesday, nearly 100 people gathered in Jackson to connect with their neighbors around a troubling statistic: Amador County has the third-highest suicide rate in California.
This story was produced as a project for the 2018 California Fellowship, a program of the Center for Health Journalism at USC Annenberg.
This story was produced as a project for the 2018 California Fellowship, a program of the Center for Health Journalism at USC Annenberg.
This project is funded by a USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism grant.
Two of the country's leading researchers and a top reporter on gun violence in the U.S. discuss how to cover the epidemic of violence as an urgent and overlooked public health problem.
Despite a tragic series of well-publicized suicides among current and recently graduated high school students in Santa Clara County, youth mental health care services remain sparse in the region.
A series of seven suicides within California’s Yurok Tribe in 2015 prompted the tribe to declare a state of emergency. In reporting on the aftermath, reporter Ryan Burns found himself facing some big challenges.
“Who has seen a behavioral counselor?” Roughly half of the kids at the Yurok Tribe's youth wellness event stepped forward. “Who has suffered from depression or anxiety?” Three-quarters of the kids came forward.
During Suicide Prevention Week advocates are conducting suicide awareness campaigns. But there is not evidence that awareness reduces suicide. More effective suicide prevention approaches are being ignored.
Ireland is on the verge of allowing death certificates to omit the cause of death, largely to spare family members of suicide victims from seeing the word "suicide" on the form. But is that reason enough to conceal the facts on such a critical document?
