Suicide Strikes Down Young Black Men

By: Paul F. CuadrosChicago's black men between the ages of 20 and 34 kill themselves more often than anyone else in their age group, The Chicago Reporter has found.

Since 1989, 203 black males in this age group have committed suicide, a cumulative rate of 16.7 suicides per 10,000. By comparison, white men in the same age group had a rate of 12.9 and Latino men had a rate of 9.4, according to the Reporter's analysis of Chicago Department of Public Health data. Suicide rates were much lower for women of all ages and ethnic groups.

The high suicide rate is yet another threat to young black men, who already suffer the city's highest homicide and incarceration rates.

"It is alarming," said Professor Janet Grossman, director of Community Action for Youth Survival, a suicide prevention program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "So much of the focus is on homicide, it's hard to find room to address other violence issues. People don't see suicide as violence, but it's self-directed violence."

Overall, whites in Chicago take their own lives more often than minorities. Since 1989, 951 whites in all age groups have committed suicide, compared to 533 blacks and 218 Latinos. But minorities accounted for 62.1 percent of the 726 suicides committed by people under 35. Two thirds of the 987 suicides after 35 were committed by whites, the Reporter found.

Nationally, suicide rates for white males between 20 and 34 are higher than for blacks. But while the white suicide rate for that age group has fallen slightly in the last 15 years, rates for young black men have increased, according to the national Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

Experts say black suicides are increasing for a variety of reasons, including depression, rampant substance abuse, risk-taking behavior and the prevalence of violence in some neighborhoods.

The rising minority rates should alarm mental health professionals, said Dr. David C. Clark, director of the Center for Suicide Research and Prevention at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center. "The public knows less about it and spends less on it than homicide," Clark said. "It's one of the most loaded and feared topics. We need to bring it in the open."

Cubby Bear
Laura saw the death of her son coming for 10 years. He would appear in her dreams, always lying in a coffin, his face cradled in the shiny satin lining.

Laura, who asked that her real name not be used, was puzzled by the dream because she believes in cremation. "I couldn't understand why I kept seeing him in this coffin until two days after he died and it hit me-the coffin was the cushioned upholstery in [his] car," she said.

"Cubby Bear" was only 23 when he killed himself by inhaling the exhaust fumes from his car. His mother describes him as a studious, bookwormish boy who was living in her South Side home after being laid off as a security guard. He recently had quit a job as a bag boy at the local Jewel Food Store and had begun to drink heavily, she recalled.

On the night of Monday, July 8, 1983, Cubby Bear came home "full of piss and vinegar and wine, maybe just wine, and he blew up at me and his grandmother about something and said 'Well, maybe I’ll just leave here tonight, maybe I'll just leave this planet.' And I know my thoughts at the time were 'Well, maybe you should,' " Laura recalled.

The next day, she found a suicide note in her son's room. "It was very impersonal, 'to whom it may concern.' I read it, my heart just kind of fell in my stomach," she said. "It was like he was giving me the finger. I gave him life and he was going to throw it literally in my face."

The stigma of suicide makes it a subject that few people-regardless of race or ethnicity-wish to discuss.

"People will want to believe anything else, even murder, [rather] than admit suicide," said Therese Gump, coordinator of client services at Loving Outreach to Survivors of Suicide, a Catholic Charities program that helps families cope with suicide. Gump lost her own son to suicide in 1980, when he was 21.

Stressed Out
The 1990 census spells out the now-familiar litany of social ills affecting black Chicagoans: black men made up 57 percent of all unemployed males in Chicago; African Americans accounted for 60 percent of the population living below poverty; two-thirds of black teens lived in single parent homes.

"I think the violence exposure, the loss, particularly in the African American community, the loss of young people, loss of jobs, loss of father figures and the exposure to violence," all may contribute to the rising suicide rates, Grossman said.

Since 1989, black males between 20 and 34 killed themselves with firearms 52 percent of the time, compared to 34 percent for white males, a Reporter analysis of city health records shows.

Dr. Carl Bell, president and chief executive officer of Community Mental Health Council, 8704 S. Constance St., said that minority children are frequently exposed to intense stress.

"What we've learned is that these problems manifest in different ways, ranging from high risk-taking behaviors, which range from using drugs to unsafe sex to engaging in violence themselves, to self-destructive behavior like suicide," he said.

The flip side of stress is "a feeling of ,nothing I do is going to matter, so why bother,' " he said. "There's a feeling of being trapped and helpless, and so in order to escape from being trapped, you die because it's a way out."

Clark, who is studying suicide autopsies in Cook, DuPage and Lake counties, said that all suicides have a common denominator: "major psycho-pathology-either depressive illnesses or alcoholism or substance abuse or schizophrenia or in the case of teens, conduct disorders." Without one of those disorders, he said, "everything else can be wrong and we don't see a suicide."

Shut Ins
Elsa Amich's phone rings again. As she talks, she switches from English to Spanish and back to English. On the other end of the line is a Hispanic teen-age girl who has attempted suicide. In the past hour and a half, Amich, a social worker at Benito Juarez High School in Pilsen, has talked with four young women, each of whom has tried to kill herself.

"I get a lot of referrals on Hispanic females," Amich said. "Females tend to seek help, whereas the males do not."

Since 1989, 41 Latinos between the ages of 10 and 19 have committed suicide in Chicago, a five-year rate of 3.9 suicides for every 10,000 youths. Whites in that age group have committed 31 suicides, or a rate of 3.6 suicides; 59 black youths have killed themselves, a rate of 3.1.

Hispanic teenagers also think about suicide more often than white or black teens, according to the 1995 Youth Risk Survey by the Chicago Public Schools.

Of the 1,750 students responding to the survey, 29 percent of the Hispanic females said they thought seriously about attempting suicide, compared to 26 percent of white girls and 19 percent of blacks.

"We've had Latino children as young as 8 years old thinking about wanting to die," said Alejandro Mora, a social worker who treats many Hispanic females at Mount Sinai Hospital on the near West Side. "They just wish they'd get hit by a car. Once they get older, at 13 years, then that's when they start trying to kill themselves. "

Immigrant parents sometimes keep their daughters home to protect them from unwanted pregnancy and violence.

Mora is counseling a teen-age girl who tried to kill herself by taking Tylenol. "This girl wants more freedom," he said. "Mom doesn't want her to go out and she fears the neighborhood. There have been shootings, and the area is gang infested."

While the public schools provide counseling and access to mental health professionals such as Mora, it doesn't help kids who don't stay in school. In 1994, 42.9 percent of Latino students in the Chicago public high schools dropped out, according to the Chicago Board of Education.

Safety Net
Until recently, few suicide prevention programs focused on minority youth, Grossman said. Her project was specifically created "to help the kids (cope) with more stress, more problems and more exposure to violence," she said.

Bell said that minority teens need a stronger-knit community, including mentors to talk to when they can't talk with their parents. "If their family is destroyed or distraught, then there’s a social system in place, in school, in church, in a mental health center that will allow them to ventilate their frustration and stress.... so that they're not quick on the trigger," he said.

Clark offers another solution: "We need white, black and Latino leaders who can come out and talk about this, not in a sensationalized but in a dispassionate way, with facts and recommendations."

Laura, who still thinks about her son's suicide after 13 years, has her own recommendation. "I think parents, spouses should trust their gut feelings, know you're not going crazy, get some help and don't let anyone talk you out of it,' she said. "Do the best you can, and maybe you'll make a positive difference, and again you may not, and then you'll have to let go and just accept it."

Interns Shruti Daté, Naazish Yar Khan and Nicolette McDavid provided research assistance for this article.