Suicides increase on Texas Gulf coast due to recession, Hurricane Ike devastation

From The Houston Chronicle:

Niki Deanne Sinclair was smart and successful — a respected physical therapist at UTMB Hospital in Galveston, a student earning her doctorate from Texas Woman's University, a woman with a loving husband and three residential properties on the island.

But after Hurricane Ike devastated Galveston in September, the 35-year-old Bayou Vista woman with a special love for geriatric patients was caught in an emotional tailspin, relatives said. The storm destroyed her home and two of her rental properties. Then she and her husband, a nurse, learned in November that they'd both be casualties of UTMB's employee layoffs.

On Jan. 4, just days after starting a new job, Sinclair fatally shot herself in her gutted condominium on North Ferry Road in Galveston. She left no note, just a wake of stunned relatives and friends who had no idea how much she'd been suffering.

Paul Barkley was a successful investments adviser supervising $100 million in accounts at UBS Financial Services in downtown Houston, a man with a beautiful wife and three children. But when the stock market tanked, Barkley, 43, became despondent, consumed with guilt and distress over his clients' financial losses. He dropped 20 pounds.

Six days before his death, he began taking a sleep aid that caused him to have hallucinations and paranoia, his wife said.

On Jan. 8, Barkley made his way to the 11th story of a parking garage near his office and sent his wife a text message: “I am going crazy at work,” he wrote. “Sorry to you and everyone.” Then he went over the wall and plummeted to the sidewalk below.

Sinclair and Barkley are among dozens from this area who killed themselves due, at least partly, to economic pressures. Records from the Harris and Galveston county medical examiners' offices show at least 26 out of 237 people who committed suicide between Sept. 13, 2008 — the date of Hurricane Ike's landfall — and March 31, 2009, were trying to cope with job loss, inability to find work, financial troubles, stock market losses or hurricane damages.

That is an incomplete picture, however. Reports for some suicides during this time period were still under investigation — Harris County alone classified 264 deaths during that period as suicides, compared with 219 during the same period a year earlier.

As a result, the actual number of economy-related suicides may be even higher. Furthermore, some who died gave no explanation for their actions, leaving their motivations up to speculation.

Harris County suicides increased overall by more than 25 percent between 2006 and 2008, according to the medical examiner's office, while the county's estimated population increased by only 3.2 percent. The suicide rate per 100,000 people went from 9.33 to 11.41 during this time — an increase of more than 22 percent.

And the pace isn't slowing — suicides in Harris County during the first quarter of 2009 are slightly ahead of the number reported during the same period in 2008.

In Galveston County, however, fewer suicides are being reported. That's likely because Hurricane Ike reduced the area's population, said chief medical examiner Stephen Pustilnik.

While such statistics cannot be blamed entirely on the economy, medical experts say the recession has taken a definite toll on mental health.

“We are seeing lots of patients who have worsening symptoms because of the economy,” said Dr. Alicia Vittone, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston and director of the Medical Sciences Institute's Adult Outpatient Clinic. “Mental illnesses worsen during economic crises, and so do addiction illnesses.”

Dr. Britta Ostermeyer, the chief of psychiatry for Ben Taub General Hospital/ Harris County Hospital District, said external factors, such as the job market or financial market, usually aren't the sole reasons people kill themselves. Underlying factors, such as mental illness — most commonly depression — typically exist also, Ostermeyer said.

“I would anticipate it's going to stay this way for a while,” she said.

Perhaps no one has more a thorough understanding of the market slump or the anguish it has caused than Gloria Veedell of Houston. The longtime real estate broker lost both her husband of 36 years and her stepson to suicides just two weeks apart.

Herman Veedell, 71, an onsite salesman for a home builder, was mourning his son's death and was under extreme pressure at work when he fatally shot himself on Jan. 8, the same day Barkley fell to his death.

Veedell's widow blames her husband's suicide “100 percent” on the economy. He had worked in the housing sales industry for 30 years and wrote the 2007 book, Birth Of A Salesman: From Stitches To Sticks and Bricks.

“My husband was just tired and couldn't fight it anymore,” Gloria Veedell said. “The unbelievable pressures to sell when no one comes in your door is what left him so frustrated.”

She understood her husband's panic — Houston's housing market is the worst it's been in her career, she said. “It just kept tumbling and tumbling and tumbling. And you could reduce the price, you could do this, you could do that, but it didn't matter,” Veedell said. “I mean, you just can't get blood out of a turnip.”

The panic and depression were just as intense for Bark­ley, but overtook him much faster. His wife, Tracy, said she did not realize the severity of his short-term depression until it was too late.

“Suicide is much more common than any of us want to believe,” said the 41-year-old real estate agent. “People need to hear that this happens to normal families.”

Tracy Barkley (pictured) said her husband had no history of depression. But two weeks before Paul Barkley died, the normally upbeat husband and father lost hope, feeling overwhelmed by his responsibilities.

Always a perfectionist at work, Barkley felt responsible for others' financial losses and became convinced that he had let down his clients, family and friends, his wife said. He worried he'd be fired. Weeks before he died, two of his biggest customers vented anger or disappointment at him about money they had lost in the market, she said.

Her husband stopped eating, couldn't sleep and began taking sleeping pills. He voluntarily cut his commissions, Tracy Barkley said.

“For some reason,” she said, “he irrationally thought we were in financial ruin.”

She recalled praying with her husband each morning for a better day. And during his final few days, Paul Bark­ley assured others he was feeling better. Tracy Barkley believed it until she received his final text message and drove downtown to see what he'd done.

After Barkley's death, UBS brought in a worker from Crisis Intervention of Houston to counsel Barkley's grieving colleagues and held a series of meetings addressing workplace stress.

Garson Silvers, a local real estate broker and developer, believes Hurricane Ike and the economy also pushed his wife, Barbara, to take her life.

While Barbara Silvers, 42, had already struggled with postpartum depression, the hurricane's destruction of the couple's business, the El Lago Marina, heightened her emotional distress. The artist shot herself at the couple's home on Nov. 13, two months after Ike's landfall.

“We went from grossing $14,000 a month to zero, and that was really stressing Barbara out,” Garson Silvers said. “Everything in her life was going awry at that moment. She thought we would lose our home, she thought we would lose everything. She thought the sky was falling.”

Houston lost 69,600 jobs between June 2008 and June 2009, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. The financial distress throughout the region is evident in the number of calls to local crisis hot lines.

Crisis Intervention of Houston reports calls from people with financial problems began increasing around the time of Hurricane Ike, then spiked last month with 292 such calls in June — a 57 percent increase from the number received during June 2008 and more than three times the monthly numbers reported in October, November, December and January.

“A good chunk of our calls are from people who are seriously in crisis — they've lost their jobs or they've been looking for a job and can't find one,” said Ashlie Brown, a crisis hot line phone counselor for the organization. “Because they've lost their jobs, they don't have the finances to go get mental health services, to support their families, to pay their mortgages. And they're really struggling. They genuinely are in a situation where they feel hopeless.”

And the majority of those calling the hot line these days are doing so for the first-time, Brown said.

Calls to the Mental Health Mental Retardation Authority of Harris County's 24-hour HelpLine also increased in recent months, spiking by more than 7 percent between February and May.

Barkley's widow is determined to use her husband's death to help others overwhelmed by circumstance — and to help families recognize the warning signs of such emotional turmoil.

“Once he stopped counting on people and allowing people into his life, he shut down,” Tracy Barkley wrote in one e-mail widely distributed to friends and strangers. “I pray that if you feel sad, depressed, wronged, cheated, hurt … that you go to someone — anyone. You are not alone. Once you shut people out of your life, it is over.”