Suicides haunt Beltrami County

Marcy LaCroix can see all three of them at once when she visits Calvary Cemetery in Bemidji.

There's her brother, Daniel Roberts, who died in 1995 at age 14. Home alone after being suspended from school for a week for fighting, he went to his bedroom and shot himself with the gun he'd taken squirrel hunting two days before.

Next to him lies Marcy's and Daniel's uncle -- their mother's brother, Bruce Lindseth. He shot himself in 2005 after struggling with alcoholism and depression. He was 48. Travis Lindseth, Marcy and Daniel's cousin, inherited his dad's depression, and on Feb. 9, he shot himself. In a note, the 20-year-old apologized for taking "the chicken's way out," she said.

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The three are part of a legacy of pain people in Beltrami County are trying to better understand since learning in September that the rate of suicide among young people there is the highest in the state.

The rate is more than twice the state average of nine suicides per 100,000 people among those under 35.

The number of young victims (63) may not sound large, but as a portion of the population (about 43,000), the rate is 2½ times that of Hennepin and Ramsey counties. Now the state is trying to identify factors that might be associated with the trend.

Suspected causes include poverty, isolation, chemical abuse and family fragmentation. Though the problem crosses racial lines, all of those social ills are overrepresented on the Leech Lake and Red Lake Indian reservations, portions of which lie within Beltrami County.

The suicide rate for Indians in the county is 2½ times that of whites, though the rate for whites in the county is high, too. One of the county's most recent victims is a 12-year-old Red Lake boy who hanged himself last month.

"It's so haunting," said Brent Gish, interim superintendent of Red Lake's schools. "Just when you think you're making progress, all of a sudden there's another setback."

The boy's death renewed community anguish over the problems of young people on Red Lake, the site in 2005 of a school shooting that took 10 lives, including that of shooter Jeff Weise, 16, who ended the massacre by killing himself.

The region's pain was aggravated recently when uninformed banter on Tom Barnard's "Morning Show," on KQRS Radio in the Twin Cities linked the suicide trend to incest and genetics. The station apologized and promised more opportunities for Indians.

"We're losing people," LaCroix said, "not Bemidji people or Red Lake people, but people and kids, regardless of their address or color."

She's part of a group of people both on and off the reservation who have joined to try to help residents acknowledge and address the problem.

Tabulating death

After a rash of suicides and attempts in 2004, the newly formed Headwaters Alliance for Suicide Prevention persuaded the state's Department of Health to study its statistics to see if the county's problem was as bad as social workers feared.

"I said, 'Not only do you have a problem, you're No. 1 in the state,'" said Jon Roesler, supervising epidemiologist in the department's injury and violence prevention unit. He examined suicides from 1990 to 2005 and hospital discharges from 1998 to 2005.

Toxicology data may show how many victims were drunk or high, and census data may show if household income or absence of parents correlates with risk.

Other suspected factors include an acute shortage of mental health professionals and no inpatient facility for suicidal people. "As they look for help to deal with this, they're going to need credible data," Roesler said.

Facing the problem

The school massacre attracted international attention, but social workers say federal and state governments haven't been as generous as expected in helping the region respond.

Red Lake got some significant grants, but some of those are expiring. Twice since the shooting, the U.S. Department of Education has denied the county's school districts a $3 million Safe Schools/Healthy Students Grant that included mental health resources, according to John Pugleasa of the Beltrami Area Service Collaborative.

"We actually have fewer resources than we did when the shootings happened," said Rebecca Snyder, suicide prevention coordinator for the nonprofit Healthy Community Healthy Kids program.

The program can afford her only part-time, advocating for at-risk families and going to schools to talk to classes about suicide. LaCroix also works in the program as an intern.

Grass-roots activities

The program hopes to secure enough money to make those positions full-time and start paying activity fees for poor students, so they can go out for sports and other extracurricular activities.

"Kids figure things out by interacting with caring, positive adults," Snyder said. "We need to help them make those connections."

While discouraged by lack of funds, the region is seeing unprecedented levels of grass-roots activity and cooperation among victims' family members and others.

In September, 160 people participated in a run/walk in Bemidji, organized by Headwaters Alliance. In October, after the suicide of the 12-year-old, Red Lake students staged a "Suicide Prevention Walk" that drew 300 people.

Red Lakers Lisa Beaulieu and Maureen Lyons, both of whom lost teenage daughters to suicide, are publicly imploring young people not to put their families through that pain and to value their own lives and futures. They have raised money for their efforts by selling tacos and raffling a used car.

"I believe this reservation has really moved in the direction of a wake-up call," said Victoria Graves, community education resources coordinator for Red Lake schools.

Seeing a 12-year-old lose hope, she said, "made people get up and start working harder."

Larry Oakes • 218-727-7344

Larry Oakes • loakes@startribune.com