BILLINGS — The state’s recently-appointed Suicide Review Team has pledged to review every suicide that occurs in Montana in 2014 to try to determine the reason and recommend ways to reduce the state’s suicide rate, which is nearly twice the national average.
The team, appointed in November by Gov. Steve Bullock, includes a pastor, psychologist, psychiatrist, sheriff, a schools official and a social worker along with Karl Rosston, the state’s suicide prevention coordinator for the past six years.
Rosston tells The Billings Gazette the team will meet eight times each year and expects to review about two-dozen suicides each month over the next three years.
For more than three decades, Montana’s suicide rate has ranked among the top five states in the nation. The state averaged 226 suicides in each of the last three years.