By Tom Ackerman | [email protected]

There is a significant recorded increase in the number of suicides nationally with the most significant increase involving females 10 to 14 years old. While factors for Johnson County trends are less clear, death by suicide is at a five-year peak.

Suicide rates have increased nationally in nearly every age group, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, which looked at a 14-year span from 1999 to 2014. Deaths by suicide increased from 10.5 percent to 13 percent during that period, according to the report.

Last year in Johnson County, 33 people died by suicide. In recent years, numbers have been steadily increasing.

“A lot of people don’t think about suicide happening in elementary schools, but it certainly does,” said Keri Neblett, the director of crisis intervention services at the Crisis Center.

Neblett said calls to suicide-prevention operators have more than doubled in recent years, largely because of outreach efforts and a push to connect with young people statewide. She also noted most of the outreach is currently focused on middle and high schools.

From the CDC report, the only age group that didn’t see an increase were people 1 to 10 and people 74 and older.

Mike Hensch, the Johnson County Examiner Office’s administrator, said there are many factors to consider, and it’s difficult to speculate why this increase might be happening.

He said one possibility could be the increase in population in Johnson County and surrounding areas. He noted that it was also the first year in his 14 years of experience that hanging deaths have outnumbered deaths from firearms, including 10 deaths from guns and 11 deaths via hanging in 2015.

The Iowa Department of Public Health and the Crisis Center formed a partnership in November 2012 in hopes to contribute their services to youth suicide prevention through the Your Life Iowa Youth Prevention Program.

Your Life Iowa Youth allows for Johnson County operators to receive statewide calls, online messaging chats, and texts as a means of suicide prevention. The program began as an anti-bullying measure and has provided materials and resources to 560 school districts in Iowa. This year, 1,250 contacts have been answered.

Jay Capron, the communications coordinator for the Crisis Center, said that messages and calls doubled from 2012 to 2013 and are on the rise. In 2013, the center received around 4,000 conversations compared with around 2,000 in 2012. In 2015, that number increased to around 6,200.

“I think it has more to do with outreach,” Neblett said. It wasn’t a very widely known service.”

Capron said he believes that the depression level in communities is difficult to assess, but that people are contacting the group for help is positive.

Capron also said that younger people are more comfortable talking about what’s going on rather than bottling up depression. The implementation of text services has assisted in outreaching as well, he said.

“We see it as a positive that people are reaching out, but we know that people are always needing to be reached.”