Boots are necessary for Mitchell Applebeck, 9, to play outside his family's dream home in their flooded lot. Both his parents lost their jobs when the General Motors assembly plant closed in Janesville. His mother, DiAnne, transferred to another GM plant in Indiana and can only see her family on the weekends. Her husband, Ben, watches over the children and searches for work in Rock County, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in the state. Andy Hall/WCIJ

By Sara Jerving
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

MILTON — Former General Motors employee Ben Applebeck applied for 50 jobs in the past three months, but not one business was hiring.

Applebeck, 49, lives in Rock County, where the shutdown of the Janesville GM plant represents the biggest single economic blow inflicted upon a Wisconsin community since the recession began in December 2007.

Rock County’s unemployment rate is 10.8 percent — one of the worst in Wisconsin. Beloit, the county’s second-largest city, is the hardest-hit city in the state with a 16.5 percent jobless rate.

The situation is especially troubling for Applebeck and his wife, DiAnne. Their yard was flooded two and a half years ago when Grass Lake overflowed, and the bloated body of water continues to lap near the edge of their house and has seeped into their garage.

As Applebeck described the difficulty in selling a house in this area — even on dry land — a neighbor floated by in a paddleboat through water that now covers most of the Applebecks’ 5-acre wooded lot.

Both Ben and DiAnne Applebeck used to work for General Motors in Janesville. But the assembly plant that made Chevy Tahoes and Suburbans, GMC Yukons and Isuzu trucks closed after three waves of layoffs in 2009, taking with it the jobs of some 2,800 employees, including the Applebecks.

The four-million-square-foot plant that had supported generations of well-paid middle-class workers now sits idle.

To blunt the impact of the job losses, General Motors offered several options for employees, such as early retirement for those who were eligible and transfers to one of its other plants in states including Indiana, Kansas, Texas, Michigan, Missouri, Louisiana and Ohio. Since the closing, 909 took early retirement and 728 employees transferred to other GM plants, according to newly released data from GM.

With two children, Benjamin, 17, and Mitchell, 9, to support and a house that no one wants to buy, DiAnne Applebeck, 46, became one of them.

For the past few months, she has made the 574-mile round trip nearly every weekend from Fort Wayne, Ind., where she now lives and works, to see her family. She plans to keep doing it for five years until she reaches the 30-year service mark that would qualify her for full retirement benefits from General Motors.

Click here to view the embedded video.

• VIDEO: DiAnne and Ben Applebeck talk about their shattered dreams — and current prospects.

The effects of the closure on the 160,000 people of Rock County go beyond unemployment. The average hourly wage for private sector Janesville employees dropped from $23.27 in 2007 to $18.82 last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Ben Applebeck knows laid-off auto workers who worked for more than 20 years at GM who now deliver pizzas at a fraction of their former pay.

Increasing signs of distress — including a drop in United Way contributions and a rise in homelessness, home foreclosures and reports of child abuse or neglect — are evident in Rock County since the recession and layoffs began, local officials say.

Leaders in Rock County point to new business activity, a convenient location between Chicago and Madison and a ready workforce as strengths to build upon. But experts who have studied Rock County and the dislocation caused by auto-plant closings warn the days of low-skill, high-paying jobs are over.

Benefits for laid-off employees are ending

Benefits that have kept many laid-off GM workers afloat now are ending. Supplementary unemployment payments, known as “sub pay,” began drying up in May. Sub pay, which provides 72 percent of a worker’s base salary, lasts from one to three years, depending on how long an employee has worked for GM. Company-sponsored health insurance started to run out in late 2009.

Rock County Circuit Court Clerk Eldred Mielke, who has watched the county’s foreclosure rate mount, wonders if the county has hit bottom.

“I think we will have a more realistic view of the impact of the closings after a lot of the benefits run out this year,” he said.

Click to view data: Where Janesville workers go, and the city's steadily worsening labor market.

Even worse off are roughly 2,170 people who worked at companies that supplied GM, such as Lear Corp. and Logistics Services Inc., who also lost their jobs but without the added benefits GM workers were offered. The cumulative effect of those job losses pushed the unemployment rate in Rock County to a high of 13.7 percent, or 11,354 people, in March 2009 — double the rate from two years earlier.

Car manufacturing had been part of Janesville for nearly a century. General Motors estimates the peak came in the late 1980s to early ’90s when the plant employed about 7,000 people. The layoffs in 2008 and 2009 rank as the largest since Wisconsin’s recession began, state Department of Workforce Development spokesman John Dipko said.

“When GM closed there was a ripple effect across the entire community; hotels needed less staff, restaurants needed fewer servers, it was an economic multiplier,” said Robert Borremans, executive director of the Southwest Wisconsin Workforce Development Board.

The state and federal government have weighed in to help dislocated workers in Rock County. The U.S. Department of Labor announced in June a $1.4 million statewide grant to help 1,680 people who are either receiving job training from the state or are on a waiting list due to funding shortages. Since 2008, the state of Wisconsin has set aside $6.1 million for training and job-search assistance for laid-off auto workers in the region, according to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development.

The smokestack of the now empty Janesville General Motors assembly plant peers over the city’s skyline. General Motors had been part of Rock County’s economic landscape for nearly a century. Sara Jerving/WCIJ

Jobs are far away, hard to get

For those who took the transfers, long-distance commuting is taking a toll. Jane Dohner’s husband, John Jr., a representative of United Auto Workers Local 95, transferred to Fort Wayne about a year ago. She now takes care of two children at home and a rural Edgerton farm including horses and cattle — responsibilities she used to share with her husband, who also is chairman of the Sumner Town Board and a volunteer firefighter.

Other members of her family also have been affected. Jane Dohner’s brother took an early retirement and two brothers-in-law have transferred to other GM locations.

“You feel like a single parent sometimes; you feel like you’ve gone through a divorce. I never wanted to live like this,” she said. “But we are grateful for what we have. He still has a job, we still have insurance, and we can keep our house.”

Times were especially hard when Dohner lost her mother to cancer in December and her husband wasn’t there. Now, her father is fighting cancer.

“How long families can sustain like this is unknown, but we do know it’s not healthy,” said Lori Stottler, the clerk for Rock County, who also sits on the Janesville School Board.

Former GM employees who didn’t take an earlier transfer and weren’t eligible for retirement got letters May 11 with a final job offer to transfer to the General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio. Those who didn’t report for work on June 1 at the plant 500 miles east of Janesville were placed on leaves of absence without any benefits. They were told they could be rehired if the shuttered Janesville plant ever reopens.

Jim Downing turned down offers to relocate, even though both he and his wife, Diane, were laid off — his wife by the Edgerton School District. Downing, 42, said he likes living in rural Edgerton and plans to retire there.

His sub pay ended this summer, and he’s been told other benefits will run out soon. That would leave his family with only unemployment checks and the pay from his wife’s summer job at a golf pro shop for support.

Downing himself is still hunting for work. He’s been unemployed for a year and a half.

Foreclosures, homelessness up

The continuing unemployment in Rock County has led to increased housing insecurity, with the numbers of homeless and foreclosures on the rise. Other signs of discord, including child abuse and neglect reports, also have increased significantly, social-service agencies report.

The number of homes in foreclosure in Rock County has skyrocketed over the past couple of years, from 55 homes repossessed by the bank in 2008 to 421 last year — a 665 percent increase, according to Realty Trac Inc., which tracks home foreclosures. Statewide, the number of repossessed homes rose much less steeply, 38 percent, from 7,713 in 2008 to 10,661 last year.

This year is on pace to be even worse yet: In the first five months of 2010, there were 283 homes repossessed in Rock County.

Another 100 people are on the streets of Rock County since the layoffs and recession began, according to Marc Perry, director of planning and development for Community Action Inc. in Janesville.

The nonprofit agency counted 294 homeless people in 2007; last year there were 403, Perry said — a 37 percent increase that has overwhelmed local shelters. Statewide, the homeless population also rose, but at a much smaller rate, according to the Wisconsin Department of Commerce, which funds homeless shelters. Commerce-funded shelters saw a 6 percent increase to 17,237 people in 2009 compared to two years earlier, spokesman Tony Hozeny said.

“Having housing is the linchpin of stability,” Perry said. “If housing is interrupted, it literally disrupts everything else in a person’s life.”

Although few former auto workers likely went from full-time jobs to homelessness, the widespread unemployment has created ripple effects. Families who formerly provided financial support for others are no longer able to because of their own situations, said Nancy Brooks, prevention manager of the nonprofit Exchange Family Resource Center in Janesville.

“Some of the families we work with in the past may have called grandma if they were short on rent so they don’t get evicted,” Brooks said. “Now grandma doesn’t have the extra cash to help. We are starting to see that quite a bit.”

Watch the full episode. See more Here and Now on Wisconsin Public Television.

Unemployment hurts children, social services

Reports of child abuse and neglect declined statewide since 2007, but in Rock County, the numbers are up.
Between 2007 to 2009, reports of child abuse or neglect in which a child was deemed to be in a threatening environment rose by 30 percent, from 1,205 reports to 1,568, according to the Rock County Child Protective Services office. Statewide, the number of such reports dropped 1.5 percent from 27,233 to 26,819 during that same time.

Brooks’ agency counsels some of the families reported for alleged child maltreatment. The exchange center saw an 83 percent jump in the number of referrals between July 2008 and June 2009 — from 72 children to 132 — compared to the same time period a year before.

For all except one child, Child Protective Services noted the abused or neglected children lacked basic services, including food, clothing, housing or transportation. In the previous year, about one-third of the children referred to the agency lacked basic services.

“With the poor economy, the parent’s stress levels are way up, and then you increase that stress level by a child who is acting out, and it becomes a pretty volatile situation,” Brooks said. “You can have the opposite effect too. You have the parent who’s so stressed out that they shut down and withdraw from their children.”

United Way of North Rock County, which funds social-service programs in communities north of Beloit, also has seen a drop in donations, fueled in large part by the loss of the GM workforce.

The organization’s budget dropped 24 percent between 2007 and 2009 to $1.24 million, most of it due to loss of donations from GM, its employees and suppliers, said Tammy DeGarmo, the agency’s director of resource development.

Economic development efforts underway

There are signs of hope in Rock County. Local economic-development officials point to nearly 30 large new or expansion projects worth about $325 million announced since 2008. The largest is the construction of the St. Mary’s Janesville Hospital and Dean Clinic at a cost of $150 million.

Ed Montgomery, executive director of the White House Council on Automotive Communities, speaks to local officials, workers and community members after a tour of the Rock County Job Center in mid-June. “This is not the federal government imposing. This is the federal government listening,” Montgomery said of the visit by himself and other government officials. Cat Szalkowski/The Janesville Gazette

Ed Montgomery, executive director of the White House Council on Automotive Communities and Workers, visited Janesville and Kenosha in mid-June with a team of officials from various federal agencies. The delegation met with local workers, officials and business leaders to discuss ways the federal government could help the hard-hit areas recover.

In Janesville, Montgomery mostly listened, promising to bring back the requests for assistance to Washington, D.C. Later that day, Montgomery cautioned during a Wisconsin Public Television interview that recovery is slow and “built a brick at a time.” He noted that his hometown of Pittsburgh was once dominated by steel mills. Now the mills are gone, replaced by hospitals, information technology businesses and other manufacturers.

“Often there’s a period of steady decline, in which unemployment rises as that employer shrinks,” he said. “And then you need to get new investments in … you need to attract new capital, you need to expand existing employers, you need to make sure the workforce is ready, you need to make sure you have the infrastructure and all that in place.”

Lawrence Molnar, associate director for the Institute for Research on Labor, Employment and the Economy at the University of Michigan, has studied about 50 regions in six states impacted by the restructuring of the automotive industry, including Rock County.

This region, he said, should work on developing new small businesses and not count on another large manufacturer to replace General Motors.

“The area will not go back to low-skill, high-wage jobs — those days are gone,” Molnar said. “An important way to make up for the gap in the economy, rebuild the community and create jobs is new venture creation.”

Of the places he’s studied, Molnar said, Rock County had one of the most organized community responses to the economic changes and is well-poised to recover.

Five public and private sector partners have collaborated in an initiative called Rock County 5.0. The project aims to raise $1 million, mainly from the private sector, to fund five initiatives to retain and expand local businesses, attract new investment and other strategies to boost the economy over the next five years.

County residents have learned a painful lesson about the value of relying too heavily on one industry, said Vic Grassman, Janesville’s director of economic development.

“GM is a great example of when you have all of your eggs in one basket, and it goes down, there are significant problems in the area,” Grassman said. “Hopefully we can diversify our investments, and it will result in a stronger local economy.”

Community pulls together

The community has come together to help itself in other ways besides economic development. The annual food drive that GM used to run was taken over by the Janesville School District. In 2009, the district raised $40,000 — double the amount that the company used to raise.

Although he’s still out of work, Jane Dohner’s brother, Don Heritage, is lending a hand to other displaced workers. Heritage helps his sister run her farm and mows the lawn for the family of one of his friends who commutes to the GM plant in Indiana. He also has moved furniture for those who’ve relocated and watches the homes of those making long-distance commutes.

“This community tends to kick into gear when it’s down on its luck,” said Stottler, the county clerk. “I think we will hit a painful point when the schools, human services and county will really suffer, but then we will see an upswing.

“I have a feeling this community is going to come out ahead and better off than it was.”

The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with its partners — Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio and the UW-Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication — and other news media. This report was prepared in collaboration with The Janesville Gazette and is part of a project also involving WPT and WPR.

Karen Albrecht is pictured holding a picture of her brother, Raymond Eiden, who took his own life in April 2008. Wisconsin's suicide rate has been higher than the national rate for about a decade. WCIJ/JOSEPH W. JACKSON III

Suicide crisis centers report increase in calls across Wisconsin. Is the economy to blame?

By Sara Jerving
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

On April 28, 2008, Raymond Eiden learned Janesville’s General Motors was eliminating the night shift he had worked for 27 years. That same day, he took his own life.

“After he heard the news about General Motors, he probably had an overwhelming flood of emotions and couldn’t think beyond that moment,” daughter Vickie Eiden said.

The elimination of the assembly plant’s night shift was followed by news the entire plant would close. Ultimately about 2,800 people lost their jobs.

Eiden was among 737 Wisconsin residents who took their lives in 2008, when suicides hit the highest level in at least 20 years.

Interviews with mental health experts and an analysis of Wisconsin suicide data by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism found:

Hope Lutheran Church in Milton hosted a tree lighting ceremony in early December attended by about 30 families in remembrance of loved ones lost to suicide. WCIJ/JOSEPH W. JACKSON III

• A total of 6,513 people took their lives in the 10 years from 1999 through 2008.
• The state’s suicide rate continues to rise, exceeds those of neighboring states and has remained higher than the national rate for about a decade.
• Suicide crisis centers in Wisconsin and across the nation report an increase in calls since the recession began.
• Stigma over discussing suicidal thoughts, lack of access to mental health care and insufficient funding are barriers to suicide prevention.

Search database of county, state suicide data

Experts say Wisconsin’s high suicide rate, relative to those of neighboring states, could be linked to a high rate of binge drinking, easy access to firearms and lack of available mental health care, especially in rural areas.

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in Wisconsin, behind influenza and pneumonia and surpassing deaths from breast and prostate cancer as well as motor vehicle accidents, according to state Department of Health Services data. Figures for 2009 aren’t yet available.

WATCH: Click to view WCIJ partner Wisconsin Public Television's coverage of suicide trends on Here and Now program.

Increasing calls for help

Some suicide crisis center hotlines across the state have reported an increase in calls since the economy began to deteriorate. While it’s hard to pinpoint why these increases have occurred, officials speculate they could correlate with rising unemployment rates that contribute to losses of health insurance, financial security, a person’s daily routine and a community of colleagues workers rely on for companionship and support.

“We are very concerned about what the suicide rates for 2009 are going to look like,” said Shel Gross, director of public policy for Mental Health America of Wisconsin, a nonprofit outreach program. “Looking at some of the preliminary data, we think there will be increases in Wisconsin that will probably be more directly attributed to the economic situation — people losing jobs and homes and the effect that has on people.”

Wisconsin’s suicide rate has been higher than the national average since 1998 and has continued to rise, while the national rate has remained relatively consistent.

Wisconsin’s rate rose slightly in both 2007 and 2008 to just about 13 deaths per 100,000. Nationally, about 11 people per 100,000 take their lives each year, according to 2006 data, the most recent year available, with higher rates in the Western states. Wisconsin’s suicide rate is higher than that of all of its immediate neighbors — Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois and Michigan.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among 15- to 24-year-olds in Wisconsin and the 10th leading cause for all ages. Men are more than three times as likely as women to kill themselves.

With a suicide rate two and a half times as high as the state average, Menominee County was hit harder than any other county over the past decade. Experts say the high rate is influenced by

“Each person has losses throughout their life, but some people are not equipped to deal with losses like others,” Derer said. “My son was one. He had lost his dad, his grandparents and at the end, he lost a major relationship with his fiancee. He just could not take one more loss.”

The loss of a job can cause feelings of humiliation and despair that in a person with underlying mental or emotional conditions, such as depression or bipolar disorder, can lead to suicide, according to the U.S. Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration. And working-age men, such as Eiden, tend to be the most vulnerable to suicide during times of economic hardship, according to the federally funded Suicide Prevention Resource Center.

In Rock County, where the jobless rate was the state’s second-highest for much of the year, the Human Services Department in 2009 saw a nearly 20 percent increase in suicide crisis contacts such as phone calls and police interventions. Crisis intervention supervisor Brad Munger says the suicide rate for 2009 may be the worst Rock County has seen in more than a decade.

Racine County officials report a similar pattern. The unemployment rate in Racine doubled to 10.2 percent in February 2009 from what it had been five months earlier. One crisis line noticed a spike in suicide crisis calls in March and April of 2009, after layoffs and closings at Pioneer Products, Circuit City, Racine Residential Care Hoplite and elsewhere.

The crisis line at Milwaukee County’s Behavioral Health Division also experienced a 15 percent increase in calls from 2008 to 2009. Similarly, the Outagamie County Crisis Center, which includes the city of Appleton, saw an increase in suicide crisis calls during 2009. Appleton saw its unemployment rate more than double between October 2008 and March 2009, and it remains high at 10 percent.

“A lot of the calls we get are about finances and loss of jobs,” Outagamie crisis phone supervisor Lisa Anderson said. “Some of the suicide attempts have been due directly to loss of jobs and not being able to maintain a certain lifestyle.”

In 2009, the U.S. Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration conducted a study in which it recorded the number of suicide crisis calls to the national hotline that were related to economic stress. In the first six months, it found 27 percent reported financial distress as one of the reasons callers were feeling suicidal.

Overall, calls over the past two years to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline also are up, which project director John Draper attributes to the economy.  The national hotline saw a 36 percent increase in calls from 2007 to 2008 and an estimated 14 percent increase in 2009 — a jump of about 220,000 calls from 2007 to 2009.

“We have an increase in calls every year, but we never have seen increases in volumes that have been as consistently large as the last two years, without any other clear explanation than the

Raymond Eiden is remembered by family and friends for his love of growing popcorn. He grew more than an acre of popcorn each year for more than 30 years. The winter before he took his own life, he decided he would stop growing his crop. Mental health experts say that a loss of interest in once-loved activities can be a warning sign for suicide. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

economy,” Draper said. ”The routine and structure that having a job once provided has been removed, and a sense of purpose and way in which to organize the day is now a void. Coming to work is a way to be with people. You have not only lost the structure in your life, but a community of people that you have shared daily experiences with.”

An increase in calls to crisis centers does not necessarily mean that the suicide rate will rise; it could just mean more people are seeking help, American Association of Suicidology Executive Director Lanny Berman said.

In response to a national need for data on suicidal thoughts and behavior, questions on suicide were included on the 2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. It found in 2008, an estimated 8.3 million people had serious thoughts of suicide in the past year, and 1.1 million reported attempting suicide.

A variety of reasons beyond financial problems can trigger suicidal thoughts. In Wisconsin, about 15 percent of suicides are reported to be associated with recent legal problems, according to the Wisconsin Violent Death Reporting System. For example, on Jan. 29, a Reedsburg man took his own life the same day he was charged in Sauk County Circuit Court with possession of child pornography. Mental health experts say that an otherwise respected individual accused of something considered shameful, such as child sexual abuse or embezzlement, may have a heightened suicide risk.

Many don’t seek help

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, 90 percent of people who die by suicide have treatable mental illnesses such as depression or substance abuse disorder. These are often undiagnosed or untreated.

Vickie Eiden said her father may have suffered from bipolar disorder, but never sought treatment because he thought he could handle problems on his own. Years ago, Eiden would spend days in bed, getting up only to go to work. But in the days before his death, he seemed all right, said his wife, Carrie Eiden.

That’s why the suicide of the 60-year-old came as to a shock to family, friends and co-workers — some of whom recalled sharing jokes and laughs with him at his nephew’s birthday party the day before.

Vickie Eiden, pictured with father Raymond Eiden at UW-Madison's Camp Randall Stadium, found comfort in attending meetings at a local support group after her father's suicide. Talking openly about suicide helps to break down the stigma associated with suicide, prevention advocates say. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

Eiden’s family began attending Survivors of Suicide (SOS) support group meetings in Madison two weeks after his death.

“It helped us to make some sense of a tragedy we never imagined would occur within our family; to understand a little more about something that seemed incomprehensible, and to find some comfort and peace through learning and sharing with a community of others who have also experienced the complex grief associated with suicide,” his daughter said.  “Too many people are isolated, embarrassed and afraid; there is just too much stigma around suicide.”

David de Felice believes an important first step in suicide prevention is for people to recognize that most such deaths stem from treatable mental illnesses. De Felice is a Dane County supervisor who lost his wife to suicide in 2006.

“Mental illness is not a personal failing or a character flaw, it can be treated and people can recover from it,” de Felice said. “Until we realize that, we can throw as much money as we want at suicide prevention, and there is still going to be resistance.”

The passage of the federal Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Acts could have an important role in the prevention of suicide, said state Rep. Sandy Pasch, D-Whitefish Bay. The federal law, which took effect at the beginning of 2009, requires coverage of mental health and substance abuse disorders be equal to medical and surgical benefits offered by businesses of 51 or more employees. Under this law, employers aren’t obligated to provide coverage, but if they do, mental-health coverage must be on par with other medical benefits.

A bill for Wisconsin mental health and substance abuse parity sponsored by Pasch awaits consideration by the full Assembly. The measure could fill the gap for some 700,000 workers in Wisconsin who work at smaller businesses, but it would allow employers with fewer than 10 employees, or those who see a big                                                                                      increase in costs due to parity, to opt out of the requirement.

Carrie Eiden thinks concern over the welfare of his fellow General Motors colleagues drove her husband, Raymond Eiden, to take his own life after finding out his shift would be eliminated. Experts believe that a rise in calls to suicide crisis centers across the country could partly the result of an unstable economy and rising rates of unemployment. WCIJ/JOSEPH W. JACKSON III

The state provided $20,000 for school-based suicide prevention activities for 2009 and 2010 and also gave Mental Health America of Wisconsin a grant of $95,000 to coordinate suicide prevention efforts throughout the state. Wisconsin created a suicide prevention strategy in 2002 that has been effective in galvanizing forces towards reducing suicide, but it still lacks funding for local efforts, said Cheryl Wittke, director of Safe Communities, an organization that works with agencies, businesses and neighborhoods to prevent serious injuries and death, including suicide.

Gross, with Mental Health America of Wisconsin, said an ideal approach to suicide prevention is a locally based safety net where community members are educated on suicidal behavior and have the capacity to respond to warning signs with health care, support groups and proper police response.

While tapping into the community has helped Eiden’s family cope with his suicide, there are times, like his daughter’s wedding last year, when his absence is especially difficult for his family.

“There will be hard times like that again in the future, like grandkids he won’t see,” Vickie Eiden said. “But he left us with a lot of good memories. For me, over 30 years of good memories.”

The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with its partners — Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio and the UW-Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication — and other news media.

Suicide Prevention Tips

According to Helping Others Prevent and Educate about Suicide (HOPES), a nonprofit organization based in Madison, people considering suicide may:

• Talk about killing themselves and become fixated on death.
• Make statements of hopelessness and belittle their own worth.
• Suddenly become happier or calmer.
• Lose interest in hobbies.
• Start visiting or calling loved ones.
• Start putting affairs in order and making arrangements.
• Start giving things away.

More than 90 percent of those who kill themselves have treatable mental illnesses, such as depression or substance abuse.

Some signs of depression:

• Substance abuse.
• Irritability, increased crying, anxiety and panic attacks.
• Difficulty concentrating and remembering.
• Disrupted eating and sleeping patterns.
• Loss of interest in ordinary activities.
• A persistent sad mood.

What to do when you notice a warning sign:

Talk with the person about depression and suicide in a nonjudgmental way to prompt him or her to seek help.

Some questions to ask include: “Do you ever feel so badly that you think of suicide?” and “Do you have a plan?” and “Do you have access to what you would use?” These questions will help to gauge whether the danger is immediate, and if immediate help is needed. Always take action when you learn of suicide plans, including calling 911 or taking the person to the emergency room.

Don’t try to minimize the person’s problems, convince him or her that things will get better or that he or she has many reasons to live. This may only increase feelings of guilt and hopelessness. It’s better to let the person know that help is available, depression is treatable and suicidal feelings are temporary.

If you deem the danger not immediate, acknowledge the person’s suffering as legitimate and offer to help work through the pain. Help to find a doctor or a mental health care professional right away.

Where to seek help

If you are contemplating suicide or have lost a loved one to suicide, these state and national organizations offer services such as counseling and support, or can connect you with help:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (Call this number if you are in crisis)
800-273-TALK (8255)

Helping Others Prevent and Educate about Suicide (HOPES)
www.hopes-wi.org
608-274-9686

Mental Health America of Wisconsin
www.mhawisconsin.org
Milwaukee office: 414-276-3122 or toll-free 866-948-6483
Madison office: 608-250-4368

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)-Wisconsin
www.namiwisconsin.org
608-268-6000
800-236-2988