Suicide rate down in Sask., attributed to ‘pulling together phenomenon’

While there has been a lot of bad news coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems fewer people have decided to take their lives into their own hands.

Deaths by suicide were down about 35 per cent in 2020 in Saskatchewan, according to preliminary numbers.

A report from the provincial coroner’s office says there were 206 deaths by suicide in the province in 2019, but only 134 in 2020.

Tyler Black is a child psychiatrist and a suicidologist at the University of British Columbia. He has been compiling the numbers for the provinces.

He notes the number for Saskatchewan is preliminary and it will rise by the time the final number is in.

However, Black said it will still be lower than 2019, estimating it could go down to a 25 per cent decrease in deaths by suicide.

Not all the provinces are reporting numbers, but from those Black has seen, he expects deaths by suicide for the country as a whole will be down for 2020.

Black said, through the pandemic, we’d been hearing a loud narrative warning about an increase in suicides because of the pandemic and lockdown measures, but that hasn’t come to pass.

“In many cases, what we see is something called the ‘pulling together phenomenon’ or the ‘pull together effect,’ where actually suicide rates tend to come down during moments of national or regional crisis,” said Black.

He said the effect happens when there are things like a war or natural disasters.

Black said it can be very difficult to predict what will happen with suicide rates, and pointed out there are few situations that can be compared to this pandemic.

Black said there certainly were reasons things got worse for people during the pandemic.

“But there was a real social coming together that I think might have had a really strong impact,” he said.

The reduction could also be attributed in part to the public emphasis on mental health — taking care of your own and others.

Black said during the height of the pandemic, he was working at a hospital and was very worried and stressed. But he would come home and at 7 p.m., there would be a chorus of applause in Vancouver.

“The first time I heard it, it made me cry and it made me feel so connected, and it became almost a cultural moment where every day at 7 o’clock where we would get together as a community and just cheer each other on and tell each other it would be OK,” said Black.

Black said he hopes the emphasis on mental health will continue even after the pandemic is over.

“I think one of the big tragedies of this pandemic, which is already a tragedy, would be if we just tried to go back to the way it used to be,” said Black.

He said many of the things that are now available to people, like being able to work from home and having flexible hours for family, are things mental-health professionals have been asking for for years.

B.C. and Alberta also have numbers for deaths by suicide out and they’re also down, but only by about seven per cent. Black couldn’t say why Saskatchewan’s difference is so much larger.

Children’s mental health

As a child psychiatrist, Black also pays a lot of attention to numbers around children’s mental health. Stats Canada, in its mental-health surveys, added questions about people’s mental health before and during the pandemic.

In looking at those numbers, Black found that while up to 40 per cent of Canadians, depending on age, say their mental health has got worse, that was the least likely answer to the question for Canadians aged 12 to 17.

Black said 60 per cent of kids said they were doing the same, 20 per cent said they were doing better, and 18 per cent said their mental health was doing worse since the pandemic started.

“That doesn’t mean we don’t care about the 18 per cent, or we say, ‘OK, job’s done, you don’t have anything to worry about.’ But obviously it tells us that the majority of kids are telling us when we ask them, ‘I’m doing OK.’ And some are saying, ‘I’m doing better,’ and we need to keep that in our mind,” said Black.

Black said kids are very flexible and the changes to their lives haven’t been as big of a blow as it has been to their parents. He also said parents and schools have been quite cautious about the kids’ mental health and are likely attending to it more.

He said looking at the numbers, this doesn’t mean every kid is OK and it doesn’t mean that some don’t need help, but he said the overall message from those numbers is positive.