Four years ago today I went from St George to the Grand Canyon. I expected to have a look at the canyon then drive on to find a cheap motel further south. But when I arrived at the lodges it had gone past the check in time, so they were offering rooms at a ridiculously low price. I stayed there that night. I also whispered the price to a few others who also ended up spending the night.
I drove to the East entrance to the park and stopped at a number of the locations along the south rim to take photos.
One of the things that struck me was how tame the wildlife seemed.
Because I was staying there I was able to take photographs right up to late at night. The changing colours were amazing.
The late night sun certainly made all the difference. I could have spent days there just looking at the changing light. But instead I found myself in the bar (with my sugar free coke) chatting to a couple. Keldon was a car painter and I chatted to him while his partner was comforting the barmaid that had just come off duty. I asked what was going on. Apparently the barmaid had just witnessed her partner pull out a gun and shoot himself.
In that bar that night I met two people that had witnessed their partners commit suicide with a gun.
The suicide rate in the USA is about double that of the UK. To put this in context using current events – around 250 black men are shot by police in the USA each year (0.5/100,000 compared to the white rate of less than 0.2/100,000). The gun suicide rate is over 7/100,000. And while police shootings have been decreasing the suicide rate is increasing.
Between 1999 and 2006 the suicide rate increased about 1% each year, since then it has increased about 2% each year (rate not absolute number for data geeks). For young white boys (10-14) the rate has doubled in the last 20 years – the number of 10-14 year old white boys committing suicide in the USA is now about the same number as black people shot and killed by police. A white man is two to three times more likely to commit suicide than a black man. And the suicide rate for white men is increasing at about 4% per year.
Sounds terrible? Just don’t get me started with the native american suicide rates.
Behind these rates are many more having their lives shattered, and many more on the verge of ending it all – young people who say they can’t take it anymore. This is the second cause of premature death in the 10-34 age range.
I wonder if one of the reasons this flies under the radar might be that the suicide rates get higher as the community size reduces. The rates in small rural, farming, communities are about twice that of inner cities, the increases are highest in the central USA. And one of the main problems must be the difficulty people have in asking for help.
So I don’t use the term “All Lives Matter”, but I cannot criticise somebody for using the term. I really don’t know their circumstance, and there are a lot of people that are finding it hard to say “Please help me”. This might just be their cry for help, either for themselves or their community.