Houston Area suicides show heavy toll of recession

[Robbien]

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.

more. . .

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6536260.html

[nolabear]

1. Lotta Katrina evacuees in that mix, I expect.

DAMN we've had some hard times in this country in this century.

[aquart]

2. You can deal with one thing, you can deal with two things, but five at once?

Like being caught in an avalanche. No way to dig out.

[Cartoonist]

3. I can deal with one thing, I can deal with two things

OK, I haven't had to deal with five things, but I don't get suicide. I am under a heavy debt due to former unemployment, and my girlfriend left me for no discernible reason I can fathom, but while there's life, there's life. I know a homeless person who says he's glad just to be alive. That's a message I take to heart.

[hedgehog]

4. Ever hear the joke about "I'm down to my last nerve, and you're getting

on it"? One of the models of brain function suggests that people with depression have fewer neurons of a specific type than normal but they manage to get by as long as they have at least some. Stress tends to knock these neurons out, causing what we see as depression. Wildly simplified, if you start out with 20 and I start out with 2 and we both lose 2, you may not even notice but I'm in real trouble.

[aquart]

5. You would think, with the amount of stress in the last century or two

There wouldn't be anybody left who was even capable of depression, then.

[Wednesdays]

6. K&R

:kick: