To the editor:

Suicide and poor mental health are rising problems in Mahoning county. The most

recent data on suicide in Mahoning county shows that suicide rates are steadily rising

since 2009 to show 1,527 suicide calls in 2021. Suicide is a preventable outcome,

therefore Youngstown should be doing everything they can to help decrease these

rates.

To prevent suicide, mental health needs to be taken more seriously, and reporting

feelings of depression and anxiety should become more accepted in Youngstown, as

well as throughout the rest of the country. To promote reporting, the suicide hotline

should be readily available to all Youngstown residents and should be posted in popular

public places such as schools, libraries, parks, malls, etc. The hotline is as follows:

330-747-2696.

Additionally, there are an abundance of mental health resources that are available

already such as counseling services and mental health specialists, but the problem lies

within public knowledge on these services. To fix this problem, I believe there needs to

be informative documents sent to each home periodically to remind the population of

these services and to help with the utilization of them as well, or calls to homes with a

message containing this information.

I believe that these minute changes can impact the population dramatically and help

to decrease the suicide rates in Mahoning county. Prevention in these cases is key, and

I believe that enlightenment on the services available will be sufficient to aid in resolving

the mental health crisis in our county.