Good morning, happy middle-of-the-week Wednesday.
I’m playing catch-up again today – a lot went on this past weekend. Saturday was World Suicide Prevention Day, which fell on Sept. 10, the end of National Suicide Prevention Week.
Technically speaking, though, I’m right on time, because ALL of September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month.
There’s a lot going on here. Let’s unpack it, because the news is really – sadly – not good.
According to the WHO, an estimated 703,000 people take their own lives around the world every year. For every suicide, there are likely 20 other people attempting suicide, and many more have serious thoughts of making an attempt.
In 2020, suicide was the 12th leading cause of death for Americans, according to the CDC, and it’s among the top three for people ages 10-34.
The highest suicide rates across the nation are among white men, according to Suicide Awareness Voices of Education, but they’re alarmingly on the rise among Black and Latino individuals.
The pandemic, with its attendant isolation, fear, financial difficulties, loss, suffering, and grief, has triggered a 25 percent increase in anxiety and depression across the globe, according to the WHO, with young people and women being particularly hard hit.
Healthcare workers and others who have been on the frontlines of the crisis have experienced high degrees of exhaustion and stress that have proved to be a significant trigger for suicidal thinking.
Making matters worse, access to mental health care, which is increasingly a top priority for many companies, governments, and individuals, is uneven, with gaps in care and disruptions in access due to lockdowns, provider closings and retirements and hospitals being overwhelmed and understaffed.
This month is a good time to learn the signs of potentially suicidal behavior, which can include – but are certainly not limited to – behavioral changes (withdrawal, sleeping more or less, self-isolating, quitting activities that used to bring pleasure, abusing alcohol or drugs, and also saying things like “People would be better off without me,” or “I just can’t take it anymore.”
There is help available. And as of this summer, that can come in the form of the new 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which reportedly is already reaching more Americans in need of assistance – and connecting them to help faster — than the old 10-digit suicide prevention line it replaced July 16.
The Biden administration invested $432 million to scale mental health crisis centers’ capacity to handle the influx of 988 calls. But individual states must enact their own legislation to change the way their communities respond to people experiencing mental health crisis and create sustained funding streams for call centers.
In New York, this year’s state budget included $35 million to significantly expand 988 crisis call center capacity statewide, and that will increase to $60 million a year starting in 2024. The state also received $17.2 million in federal cash to help staff up call centers and ensure the rollout of the 988 line went smoothly.
Remember: Help is available, and if you or someone you know needs it, don’t hesitate to seek it out.
It will be partly cloudy today – or, if you prefer to put a more positive spin on that, partly sunny! – with temperatures in the high 70s.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden is being slammed for a White House celebration of the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act yesterday – the same day higher than expected inflation in August was announced.
The event on the South Lawn drew thousands of people, as one of the biggest gatherings that the Biden administration has hosted at the White House.
Stocks fell sharply after a key August inflation report came in hotter than expected, hurting investor optimism for cooling prices and a less aggressive Federal Reserve.
Americans as a whole have experienced two years in a row of flat or declining household income, new government data showed, reflecting the pandemic’s lingering economic pain as inflation is also taking the largest bite out of pocketbooks in four decades.
Sen. Lindsey Graham offered an unexpected soft landing. The South Carolina Republican’s 15-week national abortion ban immediately diverted and divided Republicans and left Biden’s aides shocked at the political lifeline they’d just been handed.
Graham’s bill, dubbed the “Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act”, would ban abortion everywhere — including states such as New York — by prohibiting the procedure after 15 weeks.
Graham’s Senate allies swiftly distanced themselves from the plan, reflecting a lack of consensus in the party, as well as deep resistance to being drawn into any debates over abortion while economic issues hold more sway with swing voters.
West Virginia’s legislature approved a sweeping abortion ban, only allowing the procedure in cases of medical emergencies, rape and incest.
The White House has been preparing contingency plans to keep key goods moving and transportation lines open if union railroad workers strike later this week, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
Biden and first lady Jill Biden boarded Air Force One around 6:15 p.m. last night for a roughly 30-minute flight to their hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, landing with a little over an hour to spare before polls closed in the Delaware primary.
The trip had not been on the president’s publicly released schedule.
Biden is well known for taking any excuse to escape the White House for his family home, but most of his trips are during weekends. This trip lasted just a few hours, and the White House did not say why the Biden’s didn’t opt to vote by mail.
New Hampshire Republicans Chuck Morse and Don Bolduc were locked in a Senate primary too close to call last night after voters there went to the polls to pick their nominee to face Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan.
Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, who feels comfortable about his own re-election bid, reportedly plans to transfer $15 million from his campaign account to the Democratic Senate campaign effort as well as to several of the party’s key candidates.
The House approved a resolution honoring Queen Elizabeth II, who died on Thursday at the age of 96.
The coffin carrying Queen Elizabeth’s body was flown from Scotland to London yesterday, and will lie in state for four days before a funeral service next Monday at Westminster Abbey.
A report that the royal beekeeper had informed Queen Elizabeth II’s bees of her death received some mockery, but it has been a tradition for centuries.
Three new lawmakers were sworn into the House – including two from New York: Democrat Pat Ryan and Republican Joe Sempolinski – after winning special elections last month to serve out terms that will expire at the beginning of January.
A new poll showing Republicans with the edge in the newly-drawn NY-17 gives Democrats one more reason to worry how the GOP could capture the U.S. House this November by flipping swing districts across the Empire State in the midterm elections.
At least 17 million people in Europe suffered from “long Covid” within the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new study released by the World Health Organization.
Its estimate of 17 million long COVID cases applies to the WHO European region – a broader geographical region than the European Union – which is home to nearly 900 million people and comprises 53 states, including Central Asian countries.
Given the huge physical and mental health burden upon people’s lives, the WHO has called on countries to invest more in tackling this crippling syndrome.
Americans’ concern about COVID-19 is at a low point as many move on from the pandemic even with the virus continuing to circulate, a new survey finds.
The latest Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index released yesterday found that views about mask wearing and concern about community spread of the virus have both dipped.
New York’s Board of Regents voted unanimously to pass new rules aimed at addressing longstanding allegations that scores of ultra-Orthodox private schools are flouting state law by failing to provide a basic education.
Private schools, including Jewish yeshivas, that fail to meet the state’s minimum academic standards will be expected to start upgrading their instruction before Dec. 1, under the new rules.
The adoption of the new rules by the board could prove to be a watershed moment for Hasidic Jewish religious schools that for years have essentially been free to offer little or no secular instruction while still collecting public money.
A Rensselaer County elections official was arraigned yesterday, accused by federal authorities of fraudulently obtaining absentee ballots last year, using personal information of voters without their consent.
The indictment of Jason Schofield, a Republican elections commissioner, emerged from a lengthy federal inquiry into potential ballot fraud across Rensselaer County.
Lee Zeldin and other Republicans are trying to attract swing voters by aligning themselves with New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, over his law-and-order platform.
Hochul has enjoyed a huge cash advantage against Zeldin ahead of the Nov. 8 election – but an influx of cash has him and allies launching a counteroffensive this week focused on rising crime.
Hochul announced an upcoming trip to Israel and a state investment in an Israeli startup.
Cindy Adams hung out with Hochul at a Coach event during Fashion Week.
As the rising costs of groceries and fuel continues to take a bite out of New Yorkers’ wallets, Hochul announced the maximum allowable level of food benefits under the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will be available this month.
Rep. Elise Stefanik slammed Hochul for the cancellation of the West Potsdam Volunteer Fire Department’s fall gun show.
Stefanik announced she intends to run again for chair of the House Republican Conference in the next Congress.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is following through on his threat to file a misconduct complaint against Attorney General Letitia James and the independent investigators who probed sexual harassment allegations against him.
Cuomo filed the 48-page complaint with a committee in the state’s court system tasked with disciplining lawyers found to have violated professional conduct rules.
James announced a second settlement with Albany Medical Center over an illegal provision in employment contracts with nurses who were hired from overseas.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie announced some key departures of top Democratic majority staffers.
A staffing crisis at residential facilities that serve those who are intellectually and developmentally disabled is costing more than $100 million a year to handle the fallout from the flood of individuals leaving those jobs.
More than a dozen New York Republicans running for Congress or are current incumbents in the House of Representatives are backing an effort to block the state from lowering the overtime threshold for farmworkers from 60 hours a week to 40.
Adams wants to immediately grant working papers to some of the nearly 10,000 southern border migrants that have flooded the Big Apple — citing a desperate demand for workers.
Adams attacked City Council members who want to ban solitary confinement from city jails — a day after Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said she’d back the proposed ban.
City Council Democrats launched a $1 million fund that will bankroll abortion services for women who can’t afford them — an effort aimed at solidifying New York’s status as a safe haven for reproductive rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe.
City Hall is trying a novel approach to address a shortage of attorneys willing to work at the lower salaries offered by municipal government — by getting lawyers to work at no cost.
Food-industry chains including Starbucks would be required to add sugar-content warnings to menu items such as fountain sodas, smoothies, coffee drinks and even salads under a new bill being introduced by City Council Majority Leader Keith Powers.
New York City failed its obligation to house the homeless on Monday night when at least 60 men, many of them migrant asylum seekers, were denied beds at shelters, the Legal Aid Society said.
The deaths of three children who were discovered unconscious along the Brooklyn shoreline this week have been ruled homicides, the medical examiner’s office in New York City said.
NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell was fine with a careful screening by TSA agents before she boarded a flight out of town late in August — but her trip to Kennedy Airport got on the nerves of the cops who accompanied her.
A New York woman was sentenced to four months in federal prison after spitting on a passenger, then shoving a flight attendant on an American Airlines flight in February 2021, a year that saw a record number of incidents on airplanes.
Vice President Kamala Harris is set to visit Buffalo today.
General Electric Co. will keep its GE Research operations in Niskayuna intact as GE works to split into three separately traded public companies over the next two years.
GE has agreed to conduct a study of possible PCB and other potential contamination in the lower Hudson River from the Troy Dam to the mouth of the river at New York Harbor.
Despite residents collecting enough signatures to force a vote on dissolving the government of the Village of Lake George, voters overwhelmingly decided to keep things as they are.
Dominick Purnomo, who earlier this year took over Yono’s, the restaurant his parents founded in 1986 and where he long worked as sommelier and general manager, has been nominated for a Wine Spirit Award by the national trade magazine Wine Enthusiast.
University at Albany scientists have been awarded a $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to advance research to cure myotonic dystrophy — the most common form of adult-onset muscular dystrophy impacting about 1 in 2,100 New Yorkers.
Former Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano will be heading to prison after a Manhattan federal appeals court denied his motion for bail as he appeals his corruption conviction.
A union election at an Amazon facility outside Albany has been scheduled for October, setting up another company showdown with activist workers trying to build on a watershed union victory earlier this year.
An enormously popular Broadway revival of “The Music Man” will end its run on Jan. 1, reflecting a decision by the producers not to recast after the departure of the show’s stars, Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster.
Ken Starr, whose investigation of Bill Clinton led to the 42nd president’s impeachment, is dead at 76, due to complications from surgery, according to lawyer Mark Lanier, a former colleague.
Jean-Luc Godard, the daringly innovative director and provocateur whose unconventional camera work, disjointed narrative style and penchant for radical politics changed the course of filmmaking in the 1960s, leaving a lasting influence, died at the age of 91.
