Mental health stigma endures despite hundreds of years of progress in the science, treatment and understanding around mental illness.
While we no longer drill holes in the skull to release evil spirits, and there has not been a mass sterilization and genocide of mentally ill people since Nazi Germany, stigma remains deep and widespread on personal, societal and institutional levels.
While mentally ill people today are not locked up en masse in asylums, a vast number end up in prison or homeless.
And the impact of the stigma itself is devastating. Read more
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Even when all other factors are taken into account, there appears to be a correlation between suicide and altitude.
In a study of the nation’s 50 counties with the highest suicide rates and the 50 counties with the lowest suicide rates, there was an almost eight-fold difference in altitude. U.S. counties above 4,000 feet have twice the amount of suicides as counties at 2,000 feet. The counties with the highest suicide rates were above 9,000 feet. Read more
And there is a cluster of states in the Mountain West with persistently higher rates that are referred to as the nation’s suicide belt, including Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
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