accessHealthNews.net
October 2021
Volume 8 | Issue No. 50
- 9 -
T
hroughout September, the
Missouri Behavioral Health
Council and Missouri Department
of Mental Health (DMH) hosted a
webinar series for Suicide Prevention
Awareness Month. "Working to Break
the Lethal Connection Between
Substance Use and Suicide"
explored not only how access to
lethal substances pose an increased
risk of suicide, but also how addiction
and suicidality can co-occur.
Presenters Stacey Williams, LCSW,
and Rick Strait, LPC, CRDAC,
detailed recent developments
in suicide prevention training
for providers and offered
recommendations to assist substance
use disorder (SUD) professionals in
recognizing suicidality. Williams is
the suicide prevention coordinator
at the Missouri DMH. Strait is the
ITCD program manager at the
Community Counseling Center.
The presentation continued with
Diana Cortez-Yanez, a recovering
alcoholic who shared her personal
journey of suicidality and how
alcohol played a role in multiple
suicide attempts. Immersed in an
environment, culture, and religion
that didn't discuss suicide left her
feeling alienated until discovering
she was not alone in these thoughts.
Now, as a faculty member of Zero
Suicide, Cortez-Yanez shares her
story to offer hope and support
to substance users on their own
journeys.
"What I haven't been sharing – and
not on purpose – is the relationship
to alcohol within my suicidality," she
said. "I hadn't even thought about
it, but in all my attempts, alcohol
was involved. I'm so glad to be
able to bring that part of my story
up and see if it can help us see the
correlation and figure out what can
be done about it."
THE LETHAL LINK BETWEEN
SUBSTANCES AND SUICIDE
Suicide is a leading cause of death
among people who misuse drugs
and alcohol, as substance users
are 10 times more likely to die by
suicide than the general population.
Currently, one of the most commonly
used methods to attempt suicide is
to overdose.
Substance use, especially alcohol
use, is a significant factor linked to
a substantial number of suicides
and suicide attempts. Alcohol
intoxication is present in about 30-
40% of suicide attempts and suicides.
However, as Williams pointed
out during the presentation, the
combination of stigma and lack of
protocol surrounding suicide can
lead to skewed statistics.
"On an individual level, it's difficult
to know beyond the presence of a
suicide note or an explicit warning
sign, if an overdose is a suicide
attempt," Williams said. "Most
likely, the death would be ruled an
accidental overdose without those
things in place. On a population
level, there's also no standard or
consensus for classifying overdose
events as suicide. For that reason, we
can't really say if a lot of overdoses
were suicide or not."
Cortez-Yanez didn't have an active
addiction; alcohol merely provided
a means to a lethal end. "I don't like
calling it liquid courage because
it almost sounds positive, but that's
what I used it for," she said. "I knew
if I didn't drink, I wouldn't have the
courage to actually go through with
it."
Throughout treatment, she was
asked if she drank because that was
the only way she would attempt, or
if she only attempted because she
was drunk every time. "At first, I was
drinking so that I would go ahead
with it," she said.
"I really believed I was the only person on earth with those thoughts.
There's shame, stigma, that's not helpful for the people going through
it. Speaking about it is important, that's why I do what I do. Speaking
about it is the beginning for all of us to get better and help improve
suicide prevention."
