The Montana Suicide Rate Reduction Council.

Hate the fate. Reduce the rate.

The Montana Suicide Rate Reduction Council (MSRRC).                            Founded in Missoula, Montana, on August 06, 2021. 

It is our core mission to ensure that our families and communities no longer be assigned a fate of horrific character. We are dedicated to exploring the underlying causal factors to the state of Montana's horrific suicide crisis and identify what it will take to resolve this matter once and for all. Our sole interest is in what this crisis actually represents in Montana today, and we have established beyond refute that preventative centered orientations towards this crisis are simple not of use in these specific circumstances.  

The only acceptable outcome MSRRC is willing to accept is a lasting reduction in the rate of suicide in Montana. We are comprised of Montana citizens willing to go to whatever lengths we deem necessary as means to demand for this to change in the interest or our families and other loved ones. 

Our values include honesty and the right to life and equal treatment; civic duty and responsibility; the role of citizens in addressing issues that government refuses to address; and the right of citizens to challenge shortfalls in government. 

FACT: The state of Montana has been the site of a public health crisis of profound significance for many, many years. So long a time, in fact, that it's all but impossible for residents of Montana to not be directly harmed by the impacts of this crisis. This fate is overwhelmingly evident throughout the whole of Montana, but most pronouncedly in the state's more rural areas, in attendance to Montana being 85% rural. 

More years than not for at least as long as public health statistics have been compiled in the interest of the public good, the state of Montana has had the highest rate of suicide in the nation. The state of Montana, as defined by the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services (DHPPS) is the agency that the citizens of Montana have reasonable expectations of in this matter. Conversely speaking, DPHHS is the one agency that has failed to live up to those expectations and its directly associated obligations as per the public trust.   

There has been fairly extensive reporting of this status over the last few years. For example, as recently as 2018, a national news report produced by NBC provided extensive data specific to the state of Montana's failure to address this crisis in a legitimate and meaningful way (see: "Montana had the highest suicide rate in the country. Then budget cuts hit." August 18, 2018. Phil McCausland,  Elizabeth Chuck, and Annie Flanagan.) One central feature to this 2018 report detailed the fact that Montana would qualify for extensive federal funding is it were to implement a state wide system of equitably accessible mental health services. DPHHS has relied on telling the citizens that lack of public money is the core underlying feature to why these specific services cannot be made available to the citizens, but clearly, if the state were willing and able to meet the terms of this federal funding, money would not be at issue. 

Our own research, to date, includes comparative study of other states, and through this this area of study, we have also established with certainty that Montana is among the last state's in this union that even this day and age still fails to provide these services in a reasonably uniform way. Year in, year out, death by suicide in the state of Montana is thus a reality that impacts all citizens of our state. Put another way, it's is all but impossible to grow up or live very long in Montana without knowing someone who died by suicide, and in many cases, to know more than only one person who died by suicide in Montana in their own given lifetime.

   Montana has become the most dangerous state in the nation for a person to live or raise a family in if suicide is the issue most at stake. 

(PJ Reed. MA, JD. Missoula, MT. August, 2020.)

This may sound over the top. But the data is irrefutable. At a bare minimum, this qualifies in every way as a public health crisis of very critical significance, and has, in fact, acquired the character of medical emergency due to remaining unaddressed for so very, very long a time. This is a textbook representation of a breach of the public trust, the trust through which the public has allowed the state's most entrusted health care officials so much as have those jobs.  

And like any medical emergency, the need for a qualified medical response to this public health crisis is very real. The following image represents only certain aspects of this crisis, but nonetheless, can stand as a bright line example of the issues at stake in this matter. There is no justification for this ongoing public health crisis to have continued for so long. Other states in our nation do not suffer this nature of crisis, and nothing other than the result of equitably distributed access to the specifically relevant medical services. In this light, the suicide crisis in Montana can also be looked upon as the direct consequence of the state not having taken the appropriate measures by which to address this matter.

This crisis is utterly inevitable, as it would be in any state failing to provide these services. 

(Stephen Rawlins. LCSW. Bozeman, MT. Fall, 2020.) 

 

Our founder, P. Jack "PJ" Reed, is highly educated in matters relating to suicide. His father committed suicide when he was ten years old (1971), and the direct impacts of this suicide tore the very fabric PJ's family apart at the seams. While being the youngest child, our founder was definitively impacted by worst fallout of his father's suicide, including severe emotional and psychological abuse that only arose due the suicide death of his father. Thus, our founder was all of fourteen years old when he first seriously considered suicide. These things also made it impossible for PJ to finish high school in good standing, and all but eliminated any consideration of college when he was in his 20s. But because PJ had been able to persevere in this fashion for most of his younger adult life, he did find his way into college, and his formal college education came to include two graduate degrees, beginning with an MA in 2000, and a law degree in 2004.

However, the long buried emotional trauma associated with PJ losing his father to suicide arose in full color when he was in his 30s, and this did come to very seriously undermine his earned career aspirations and many other aspects of his personal life. And in this vein, our founder did himself attempt suicide on several occasions circa 2005-2009. Ultimately, this led to our him being confined to a state mental hospital for a period of almost two full years. All of these specific challenges in our founder's specific history arose as a direct consequence of his father's suicide. 

And it is on the basis of this history, it is fair to say that our founder knows all too much what suicide can do to a family, and his given familiarity with acute suicidal ideation and intent, and actual attempts, does make him somewhat of an expert in terms of this project.  

     "Talking about suicide prevention in Montana is like talking about poverty prevention in Haiti." 

(E.F. Stewart, MD. December, 2020. Great Falls, MT.)

It is extremely obvious that this crisis demands more than traditional approaches to suicide prevention are able to provide. If this was not true, we would not where we are today, looking as we are at a history with of suicide rate that has always been amongst the top three in the nation, and the highest rate of suicide in most years, in fact.

Another crucial aspect of this is represented by the plain fact that prevention as an ideal and as applied in practice is defined by providing whatever is necessary to ensure that whatever it is that you are trying to prevent does not accumulate to a point of crisis. Suicide prevention is no different, while at no point in its known history has DPHHS ever met this standard, for the suicide crisis in Montana has clearly never been managed and kept in check. Consequently, the rate of suicide in Montana has been out of control for so very long a time that it long ago came to eclipse the limitations of traditional approaches to suicide prevention. And today all of the risks associated with suicide continue to increase at unabated and ever increasing rate. 

Suicide will never be entirely preventable. But an out of control rate of suicide is preventable. 

(MSRRC briefing notes. April 2021. Missoula, MT) 

And yet, despite this horrific reality, DPHHS continues to limit its response to this crisis to traditional approaches to suicide prevention. Another way of putting this, of course, is to say that DPHHS relied upon the funds provided to them by the citizens of our state and thrown that money into a suicide prevention program that has never made so much as a dent in this crisis. (*see note below.) Clearly, were the suicide prevention programs in Montana in any way successful, the citizens of Montana today would have to face this reality today. We would't be here, in other words, embroiled as we all are today in a suicide crisis like none ever seen before. 

* In early spring, 2021, Montana Senator Bob Keenan rejected the most recent effort of the state to further invest these funds into this specific program on the basis of the plainly established fact fact that they have never made one bit of difference. MSRRC has spoken at length with Senator Keenan since that time. 

To further understand the limitations to suicide prevention, it is very useful to consider the shortfalls of "1-800 suicide prevention" hotlines. One bright line concern at stake is that these hotlines have no foundation in established scientific method, for one thing. Which is to say that there is not means by which to measure to possible benefits to this approach. While it is also true that most persons intimately familiar with acute suicidal ideation and intent, one the last things these such persons are typically interested in doing is to pick up a telephone in hope of speaking with a total stranger. And yet, this tool is both highly touted by DPHHS, as well as something that the state has continually thrown taxpayer at.  

       You wouldn't want Smokey the Bear running around the fringes of a full blown wildfire                      handing out fire prevention pamphlets. 

Of course not. You would demand actual wildfire professionals with requisite the qualifications to address wildfire. And yet, this is precisely what the citizens Montana are expected to accept: One DPHHS employee overseeing the whole of this public health crisis who is neither a medical professional, in fact, nor one who can serve to address this crisis. He is a bureaucrat, and bureaucrats must not be trusted to address this issue. 

Karl Rosston.
Licensed social worker.
DPHHS' "suicide prevention Coordinator"

Our compiled data base includes testimony from Montana mental health care providers who are required to attend "suicide prevention" training as matter of continuing education. And these providers have made clear that Karl Rosston never brings anything new or constructive to those educational sessions. 

In epidemiological terms, the Montana suicide crisis can be defined by an exponential increase that occurs with each and every suicide death. Here again, traditional approaches to suicide prevention are limited to linear perspective, as in raw numbers and other such data. This has irrefutably proven itself for the better part of the last 100 years as having no bearing on the reality faced today by the citizens of Montana as a whole. And on this simple basis, there is a crucial for the state of Montana to utilize a exponential (non-linear) perspective as means to approach this crisis for just what it is. 

It will take more, of course. We contend that this public health crisis requires a relevant medical response and specific medical specialists who can address this nature of crisis, generally speaking, and other such specializations specific to suicide as crisis, specifically speaking. In considering this, there are plenty of models available in our nation when it comes to other states have been successful in protecting their citizens from suicide through application of suicide management and prevention.  

In this vein, MSRRC is preparing its first ever grant proposals specific to funding. We know for good reason that there are more people out there willing to donate to this matter than might be excepted willing to support of effort such as our own. From a social perspective to one grounded in medical science, there are many entities that would very much appreciate the opportunity to solve this crisis once and for all. Likewise, we know that there are journalists who would similarly appreciate the opportunity to follow the course of our work and be the first to make our process known to the greater public, and other like professionals who simply care enough to take part in a process such as this one.

This can stand as the first blog on this site. There is much work to be done, however, and there will be many more of these blog articles as this process plays out. For all of those who care about this, and we know many of you do, please get back to us at your soonest convenience. If we do hear from you, MSRRC will be happy to provide all and any other data we have compiled to this point. We have no interest in profiting from this or to in any way personally benefit from this project. Our own history can prove this, and we will be happy to provide such proof upon request. 

At its root, however, this crisis is steeped in pain and suffering that no amount of data can illustrate more accurately than those who have lost a loved one to suicide. And this underlies why MSRRC exists. Montana families deserve as much.   

Our founder.

dirtiestsecretmontana@gmail.com