Oct. 23--THE LATEST NUMBERS ARE IN -- 895 suicides in Virginia in 2006. That's 10 percent more than in 2003, when the state first started really keeping tabs.
Two Virginia Beach mothers think it's time for a talk. They've cobbled together a coalition, rented a hall, enlisted some experts and extended an open invitation to anyone willing to tackle this dark subject.
"Beacon of Hope" -- a three-day event -- starts Thursday evening with a free community forum at the Virginia Beach Resort Hotel and Conference Center. A panel of professionals will include doctors, educators, social workers, military specialists and therapists.
The conference -- the first of its kind in Virginia Beach -- is the brain child of two local mothers. Kathy Wakefield and Elaine Roberts have each lost a child to suicide -- one at 21, the other at 15. And while time has dulled the sharpest edge of their grief, moments still come out of nowhere when it's tough to even breathe.
"You never get over it," Roberts said. "You just have to figure out how to live with it."
Purpose helps these mothers deal. Goal one: reverse a troubling trend. Suicide is on the rise -- at least in Virginia. No one knows yet how the state stacks up against others. Most of them are still citing numbers from 2004.
Virginia vaulted ahead of the curve in 2003 when the state got in on the ground floor of the National Violent Death Reporting System -- a federal effort to take a look at what kills Americans. Using grant money, Virginia built a system to tap the death records of towns large and small. The end result is a database that continues to spit out more up-to-date and detailed reports.
When it comes to suicide, the tally has crept higher each year: 805 Virginians killed themselves in 2003 ... 837 in 2004 ... 877 in 2005... and now, 895.
"If this continues, well ... you can see where it's going," said Virginia Powell, who oversees the database from the state medical examiner's office in Richmond.
Powell cautions that her latest math is preliminary. It has yet to be double-checked and certified. Still, she's not expecting much change -- except in the wrong direction. Totals tend to only creep upward, fed by long-running death investigations that finally reach a ruling.
To account for Virginia's growing population, Powell uses a standard formula that counts suicides per 100,000 people. That bottom line shows an increase as well. In 2003, the state's suicide rate was 10.9. Last year, it was 11.7.
"That's almost a whole other person," Powell said.
Of all the death she keeps an eye on, Powell says, suicide stands out.
"It's all the despair," she said. "It's just enormous. And it crosses the life span."
Indeed, a look behind the stats reveals that Virginians over 85 years old are eight times more likely to die from suicide than homicide. At the opposite end of the age spectrum, suicide is the third-leading cause of death for the state's 10- to 24-year-olds. On average, two die every week. Another 200 make an attempt.
Many will try with no one being the wiser. Others will wind up in an emergency room. In 2004, the most recent year medical records were scoured, self-inflicted injuries landed 1,284 of Virginia's youth in the hospital. Average length of stay was three days, at a cost of $5,288.
Add up similar medical costs across the age brackets, and the annual bill for Virginians trying to kill themselves comes to $40 million.
Of course, Wakefield and Roberts would have paid any amount to save their kids. Now, their best hope is to save someone else's.
Roberts puts it like this: "We don't want anyone else to know what this feels like."
-- Reach Joanne Kimberlin at (757) 446-2338 or joanne.kimberlin@pilotonline.com
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