| OCR Text |
Show i Suicide is 8 Most Serious I Cause of Death in Utah , ' Preliminary reports indicate -146 and 134 Utah residents took their lives in 1973 and 1974 respectively. Annually suicide is the eighth leading "cause of death in Utah. Eighry-, Eighry-, eight per cent of these deaths occur , to residents of the porous Northern Utah includes Rich, Cache, I Boi Elder. Weber, Morgan, Davis, Salt Lake, Tooele, Utah, Wasatch and Summit counties). It is known that not all suicides are reported as suicides. It seems likely that I more under-reporting occurs f in rural areas, where the state I medical examiner program is I not as completely established, I than in urban areas. However, ' this under-reporting is widespread wide-spread throughout the coun-. coun-. try. Charts concerning suicides in Utah are based on the suicidal deaths reported to the Bureau of Health Statistics of the Utah State Division of Health. Chart A gives the number of suicides to Utah residents and to residents of the Northern Utah counties and districts for each of the 5 years, 1970-1974. Chart B gives the suicidal death rate for the Nation, the State, Northern Utah and each multi-county district for each year 1970-1974. As can be seen in these charts the number of suicides and the suicidal death rate vary considerably from year to year. This is due mostly to the problem of small numbers. For example, the number of suicidal deaths reported in the Bear River District dropped steadily from nine in 1970 to only two in 1973, a 78 per cent decrease. In 1974 the number of deaths from suicide jumped to 11, an increase of 450 per cent over 1973. Because of the small numbers involved these rapid shifts in numbers and rates are not very useful indicators of shifts in the sSze of the problem. Consequently, conclusions based on 1 year of data, especially with small populations, may be misleading. mislead-ing. It is recommended that statements regarding suicidal deaths be based on more than a single year of data. |
