COMMUNITY
Taboo, until too late Maricopa leads the county in teen suicide. It’s a mounting problem BY MONICA D. SPENCER
TRENDING THE WRONG WAY
In children ages 10 to 14, rates tripled from 2007 to 2018, and the number nearly doubled in those 15 to 19 from 2009 to 2017. In Arizona, 54 minors
County city. And those are just the deaths reported by PCMEO, Davis said. InMaricopa has identified at least six suicides of teens who lived in Maricopa since 2020 — most recently, on Nov. 21, 18-year-old Sequoia King, an American Indian, hanged himself at a park in Tortosa. That means more than 1 in 4 teen suicides in Pinal County happened in Maricopa, a city with just 15% of the county’s population, the figures suggest. It could be worse still, though. “Let’s just say an incident occurs at a home in Maricopa, but the individual is still alive, and they’re transported to a trauma center in Chandler,” Davis said. “If they die at that trauma center, this office wouldn’t handle the investigation, Maricopa County would. So, these numbers could be higher.” And it’s true. Some teen suicides that occurred in Maricopa and were publicized by family members on social media or reported by InMaricopa were not among the death statistics issued by PCMEO. That included Zack Born.
suicide appears virtually unchanged at 49,359 reports. Locally, the statistics are generally worse. More than 21 in every 100,000 Arizonans died by suicide in 2022, 50% higher than the national average. The Grand Canyon State had the ninth highest number of suicide deaths in 2021 and 2022, totaling 1,479 and 1,596, respectively. In Pinal County, the trend followed. The medical examiner’s office reported investigating 111 suicide deaths
Our general unwillingness to talk about suicide deaths is a detriment to our ability to come up with solutions.”
Sifting through statistical data on suicide deaths is overwhelming. So is trying to find humanity in all the numbers and charts. But the numbers show exactly why that conversation is so important. The groups who are more likely to die by their own hands don’t change, no matter from which county or state the data originates: American Indians and Alaska Natives, men and the elderly. More than 23 in every 100,000 people from each of these populations died by suicide in 2022, nearly double those in other groups. Suicide rates overall have steadily increased this century, peaking in 2018 and again in 2022, according to the CDC. The federal agency reported 49,476 Americans — a standing room-only crowd at the Diamondbacks’ Chase Field — took their lives in 2022. About 14 out of every 100,000 Americans died this way that year. And while the agency has yet to finalize figures for 2023, the preliminary number of deaths from
ANDRÉ DAVIS, PINAL COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE
died by suicide last year, an estimated seven deaths per 100,000 kids. That is nearly a 16% increase from the previous year, in which the Arizona Child Fatality Review Board reported 46 deaths, or six per 100,000. And in Pinal County? Up even bigger “Since 2020, we’ve had about 14 minors in total who have taken their own lives,” Davis said. Minors accounted for nearly two-thirds of the 23 suicide deaths in Pinal County residents under 20, with the youngest victims just 12 years old. And, following the annual trends, those deaths peaked in 2022 with the death of six tweens and teens. The statistics showed boys accounted for 74% of the teen suicide deaths in Pinal County since 2020, including those ages 18 and 19. Half were White, non-Hispanic youth. More teen suicides
OTHING SEEMED OUT OF THE ordinary. Until that Thursday. In the days before his suicide, Patty Born said her 19-year-old son Zack was on an upswing after months of personal tumult. “He had been not well before, but he was doing fine this time,” she said. “I didn’t have a concern in the world.” Zack had been bullied at the Culver’s restaurant on John Wayne Parkway, where he worked, he said. He felt like a pariah with few friends in a new city more than 2,000 miles from his hometown; but he had just gotten his driver’s license and bought himself a truck. He was excelling in college and had a job interview at Target the next day. “I remember very clearly saying to him, ‘Zack, you’re doing great, I’m really proud of you. You’ve accomplished what you wanted to accomplish,’” Born said. “There were no signs until that day.” On Sept. 5, Born found Zack heavily intoxicated in the middle of the day. And then it happened. Her middle son, the one who enjoyed working with his hands, who always tried to lighten the mood, who loved skateboarding; the one who adults always lauded for being “so polite, so mature” and lived with autism and depression, died by suicide that day. Zack’s was not the latest teen suicide in this city. ‘A huge stigma’ Few people talk about how suicide is among the leading causes of death for America’s youth. It is second to accidents in children ages 10 to 14, and the third leading cause among teens 15 to 19, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Perhaps there’s a fear that speaking about it will cause it to happen. Perhaps there’s shame in not protecting the most vulnerable in our community, or worse still, not recognizing their vulnerability until it’s too late, experts speculate. N
in 2022, a 30% increase from the previous year.
The numbers decreased in 2023, but last year they spiked again with 89 deaths tallied as of early December and likely more still to be recorded. Youth suicide up big in U.S. Standing out among the data are the deaths of America’s future, its children. A CDC data brief from June showed after years of stable or dropping rates through the early aughts, suicide deaths for people ages 10 to 24 increased 62% from 2007 to 2021, rising from fewer than seven to 11 deaths per 100,000.
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happened in Maricopa than in any other Pinal
Suicide, Davis said, is “an uncomfortable reflection and an uncomfortable conversation to have.” “However, it’s a conversation that needs to be had,” he said. “I don’t think a lot of people realize it can affect their own lives.” No second, second chance When the Born family relocated to Maricopa from Maryland last year, they viewed the move as a fresh start. They had already endured a father lost to suicide more than a decade earlier and a house fire in 2022 that left Zack’s body permanently scarred. The family owned almost no belongings. A new home in Tortosa felt like a second chance. At least, Born thought so.
Or perhaps we’re so used to sequestering life from death that speaking of death in life feels anything but natural. That’s what André Davis, operations division manager for the Pinal County Medical Examiner’s Office, believes. “We as a culture don’t really talk about death,” he said. “There’s a huge stigma in talking about death, because it’s not a comfortable subject to have. It’s done behind closed doors, which hides the process itself.” And for a man who has found himself surrounded by and speaking of death for years as a paramedic and a medicolegal investigator in three counties across the West, speaking about suicide can still feel uncomfortable.
Tortosa resident Patty Born sits with a senior photo of her son, Zack, Dec. 6. Zack died Sept. 5 by suicide at 19.
Patty Born and her son Zack, 17, during his last day in the burn unit in May 2022.
InMaricopa.com | January 2025
January 2025 | InMaricopa.com
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