Statistics on Suicide in the Workplace Shock Healthy Workplace Advocates!

California Healthy Workplace Advocates respectfully acknowledge today, Sept. 10, 2009, as National Suicide Prevention Day. It's difficult NOT to link workplace bullying with workplace suicides. Last month, the U.S. Department of Labor released the following statistics:

"Increase in Occupational Fatalities due to Suicide Preliminary data from the 2008 Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) program reported 251 workplace suicides, their highest level since the inception of the CFOI program in 1992. The 2008 count is 28 percent higher than the 196 suicides recorded in 2007. Further information on the increase in occupational fatalities due to suicide is available at www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/osar0010.pdf."

According to Chris Penttila, reporter for Examinier.com, "These figures don’t include employee suicides that happened away from work property, however. More than 30,000 Americans die as a result of suicide every year --- making it the fourth leading cause of death for adults ages 18 to 65, according to the Feeling Blue Suicide Prevention Council, a Pennsylvania-based organization that works both to prevent suicides and to support the people affected by them."
http://www.feelingblue.org/about-suicide/facts-figures

“Even more sobering: The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention reports that 90 Americans will kill themselves today, and 2,300 more will try.”
http://www.afsp.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.viewpage&page_id=050FEA9F-B064-4092-B1135C3A70DE1FDA

Will these statistics go down when states in the United States have a Healthy Workplace law? Will a law that corrects and prevents workplace bullying, much like the sexual harrassement laws we now have, prevent workplace suicides? We believe so. We believe the time has come to advance our society to the next level of humane treatment...remember the "Golden Rule"?