N.W.T. coroner's office releases grim statistics on suicide
CBC
Twenty-nine people in the N.W.T. have died by suicide in the past 21 months, almost all of them were young men.
On Monday, Chief Coroner Garth Eggenberger released data on suicide in the territory from 2021 and 2022. The data shows 22 males and seven females died by suicide between January 2021 and the end of this September.
Eighteen of those deaths happened this year, while 11 happened last year.
This year's numbers are significantly higher than any numbers seen since at least 2011. In 2020, a 10-year review of deaths in the territory showed the number of suicides fluctuating between seven and 13 between 2011 and 2020.
Suicides accounted for roughly 10 per cent of all the deaths reported in that time span.
So far this year, that number has jumped to 17 per cent — 18 out of 106 deaths so far in 2022.
One constant between the 10-year review and this latest report is that young people — most of them male — are the largest group represented in suicide statistics.
The latest numbers from 2021 and 2022 show the statistics skewing overwhelmingly toward young men between the ages of 20 and 40.
Thirteen men in their 20s died, along with six in their 30s. Four women in their 20s also died.
That falls in line with what was seen in the 10-year review: at that time, most of the deaths by suicide were among those between 20 and 40 years of age, with 78 per cent of them male.
Alcohol routinely contributes to the deaths by suicide. In the 10-year review, more than half of the suicides involved alcohol as a contributing factor. Last year, seven of the 11 deaths involved alcohol. Results are still pending for 2022.
The latest coroner's report also breaks down the data by region. In 2021, the majority of suicides happened in the North Slave region, where six people died; this year, the majority were in the Beaufort-Delta, where seven have died, including four in Tuktoyaktuk, according to the hamlet's mayor.
Both of those regions were the highest for suicide deaths in the 10-year report as well. Between 2011 and 2020, 33 people died by suicide in the Beaufort-Delta, and 34 in the North Slave.
