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TULSA --
Oklahoma's rate of violent deaths, spurred mostly
by a high number of suicides, outpaced the average
of 15 other states participating in a recent study
by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC's
National Violent Death
Reporting System categorizes violent
deaths as suicides; homicides and deaths from legal
interventions, like police shootings; deaths of
undetermined intent; and unintentional deaths,
which were statistically insignificant for Oklahoma
and the 16 states as a whole.
Oklahoma's
violent death rate of 25.4 per 100,000 people in
2005 was determined by the total number of violent
deaths, 902, according to information provided by
the Oklahoma State Department of Health.
The state's
rate was about 24 percent higher than the 20.5
violent deaths per 100,000 people in all 16
reporting states combined.
Oklahoma's
high violent-death rate was attributed to a high
number of suicides and deaths of undetermined
manner, said Sheryll Brown, a project manager with
the state Health Department.
"When you
speak of violent crime, most people think of
homicides," Brown said.
But in 2005,
517 Oklahomans took their own lives, representing
57 percent of the violent deaths in the state that
year.
The state's
suicide rate of 14.6 per 100,000 people was about
27 percent higher than the 16 states' combined rate
of 11.5.
Jeff Dismukes,
a spokesman for the Oklahoma Department of Mental
Health and Substance Abuse Services, attributes the
state's high suicide rate to a high number of
residents with mental-health and substance-abuse
problems.
"About 26
percent of all Oklahomans have a mental or
addictive disorder, and the issue there is a large
number of people are not receiving treatment," he
said.
Other factors
that contributed to the state's high suicide rate
are its high poverty rate and number of residents
without sufficient access to health care, he said.
The rate of
violent deaths of an undetermined manner in
Oklahoma was 4.3 per 100,000 people, about 59
percent higher than the 2.7 rate per 100,000
undetermined-intent deaths in the 16 reporting
states combined.
In 2005, 227
homicides, including 17 "legal interventions,"
occurred in Oklahoma, information provided by the
state shows.
A legal
intervention includes executions and fatal
shootings by a law enforcement officer in the line
of duty.
For that year,
the rate of homicide and legal intervention was 6.3
per 100,000 people, which was comparable to the 6.1
rate of the other states.
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