Editor’s note: This story refers to trends in death by suicide in Vermont.
Despite spikes in gun sales and worries from mental health advocates that the Covid-19 pandemic could spur a rise in deaths by suicide, the number of Vermonters to die from gunshots remained relatively steady in 2020 compared to previous years.
Preliminary data released by the Department of Health last week show guns killed 75 people in Vermont in 2020. Sixty-seven of those were deaths by suicide, and eight were homicides.
In the year prior, 67 Vermonters died by gunshots; 59 of those deaths were suicides, five were homicides, and three were police shootings. Firearms killed 82 Vermonters in 2018.
While each death represents a tragic loss, mental health experts say, the 2020 numbers indicate what may be a bright spot in Vermont’s response to Covid-19. Deaths by suicide have historically comprised the majority of the state’s fatal firearm incidents, and many feared that the hardships of the pandemic could cause a sharp rise in those deaths in a year when gun sales spiked.
“When I look at those numbers, I think they show that Vermonters showed a great deal of resilience through the pandemic,” said Alison Krompf, director of quality and accountability for the Vermont Department of Mental Health. Krompf leads suicide prevention efforts for the department.
Firearms and suicide deaths are intertwined in Vermont. The vast majority of gun deaths to occur in the state each year are suicides — and most of the state’s total deaths by suicide are inflicted by firearms.
In 2018, 125 Vermonters died by suicide, and 70 of them were killed by gunshots, according to Stephanie Busch, injury prevention manager for the health department. Those numbers dropped to 109 and 59, respectively, in 2019 — the first year since 2011 that Vermont’s suicide rate declined, according to Krompf. In 2020, 115 Vermonters lost their lives to suicide in total, Busch said.
Nationally, the number of people to take their lives with firearms has ticked upward over the past several years. Vermont’s rurality, elderly population, high rate of gun ownership and substantial number of military veterans are all factors that have contributed to the state having one of the country’s highest — and rising — rates of death-by-suicide during that time.
Men have historically been the most likely to take their own lives with guns in Vermont. That trend appeared to remain true in 2020, when 67 of the 75 Vermonters to die from gunshots were male, according to the preliminary data.
Overall, the state’s suicide rate increased by about 30% each year from 2011 until 2019. While relieving, officials say that the steady number of suicides by firearm in the pandemic year is thus still part of a grave trend Vermont must keep working to address.
“I say ‘steady’ as if steady is good, but we still want [the rate] to go down,” Krompf said.
Advocates agree and have been pushing a pair of legislative proposals they say would help those efforts. Those measures would direct funding toward suicide prevention and create a suicide prevention coordinator position at the mental health department.
Part of the reason last year’s gun deaths remained steady rather than going up, Krompf believes, is that support systems materialized that hadn’t been in place before.
The circumstances that can drive someone to consider suicide are individual and complex, and often hinge as much on life circumstances as mental health. So steps such as increased housing for homeless people as well as consistent messaging by officials on the importance of mental health care may have played key roles in averting more self-inflicted gun deaths, Krompf said.
As vaccines roll out and people prepare to return to public life, officials say continuing to offer that support to Vermonters will be key.
“From the mental health side of things, it’s often more when the crisis is over and the support kind of goes away when you start to worry about how people are going to manage,” Krompf said.
Deaths involving guns remained steady despite a sharp increase in gun sales in Vermont. Background-check data show Vermont’s gun sales shot up twice in 2020 — once when the pandemic began and again ahead of the November presidential election.
According to the federal data, the two sales spikes were part of a steep overall rise in firearms sales in the state compared to previous years. The number of background checks on gun sales in Vermont rose to nearly 58,000 in 2020, the data show — up from 41,000 in 2018 and 36,000 in 2019.
Officials aren’t yet sure what the possible effects are of those sales spikes on firearm death and injury numbers, Busch said. The health department urges anyone who has a gun to store it safely — with ammunition and firearms kept in separate locations.
In a state where upward of 40% of residents have a gun in their home and with a high incidence of gun-related injuries, safe storage is a key public health step for Vermonters, Busch said.
“Thinking of injury prevention across public health, firearm injuries aren’t just increasing — they’re also increasing in severity,” Busch said, “so we really have been pushing to encourage people to store their guns safely.”
If you need help, the National Suicide Hotline is available 24 hours a day at 800-273-8255 and the Vermont Crisis Text Line is available at 741741. You can also find local organizations in your area here.
