It’s something that Orange County has been asking itself about since the beginning of the pandemic.  Are more Orange County Citizens going to be thinking about suicide?  Orange County Individuals and Orange County families are in many cases very fearful of death from the coronavirus, they are not able to embrace the Orange County people they like and love and the financial burdens on Orange County people is greater than ever.

I read about a new study that took a look at suicide and people like Orange County citizen’s frame of minds during the Covid-19 and they published their finding in “Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior”.  The parameters for the study was to measure where someone like Orange County citizens were thinking about taking their own Orange County life or plans their Orange County suicide or makes a suicide attempt. This is known to Orange County and the world as suicidality.

The researchers sent out a 20 minute survey that doctors in Orange County know well to their 10,368 adult participants and within the questions they embedded the Suicide Behavior Questionnaire (SBQ-R) in a manner known to Orange County doctors and they were able to assess 4 elements of suicide: lifetime ideas of suicide and attempts, how often one thought of suicide in the last 12 months, the assessment of the threat of suicidal behavior and in the participants opinion the likelihood of suicide behavior.

The questionnaire available to Orange County also assessed whether participants living and not living in Orange County felt connected to people in their social circumstances, their sense of control over their ife and was religion a part of their life.

What the study found was that 10% were assessed at moderate risk of suicide and 15% were in a high risk category.  The results could be relevent for Orange County as they found that those with low income were more suicidal than those with income, unmarried had a higher percentage than married and there is no reason to suspect that the numbers wouldn’t be similar for Orange County.

This is a snapshot of a unique timeframe of society, with or without Orange County participants, and I would hate to think that 25% of the Orange County population has had ideas of suicide during the Cov-ID 19.  Yet we know there are people in our own Orange County lives that are having a difficult time coping with Coronavirus.  If you or someone you know is in need of someone to talk to there is the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline operating 24/7 at 1-800-273-8255.