The Ute Mountain Ute and Cortez communities in the Four Corners region are grieving this week after two middle school students died by suicide over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, the latest in a growing crisis that has Colorado leaders desperately searching for solutions.
Jeit Redrock Height, 15, and Andrew William Cuch Jr., 14, both were lifelong residents of Towaoc, a town of fewer than 1,100 people on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, said ReeAnna Mills, a spokeswoman for the tribal administration.
“The community is taking it really hard,” Mills said Thursday. “These boys were incredible kids.”
The two students were enrolled in Cortez Middle School, but mostly received education services from the Education Department in Towaoc, according to Montezuma-Cortez superintendent Lori Haukeness.
“If you lose one student, that’s one student too many,” Haukeness said.
The Journal newspaper in Cortez first reported the deaths, as well as a suicide attempt that same weekend by a local high school student.
Wednesday night, the community held a candlelight vigil for the boys.
“One thing people keep asking is, ‘Why?'” Mills said. “What’s causing them to hurt so bad that they think this is their only way out?”
It’s a community that has become accustomed to tragedy.
“It’s kind of something we’ve grown into expecting,” she said. “Just the amount of bad that could happen at any moment.”
American Indians and Alaska Natives have the highest rates of suicide of any racial/ethnic group in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rates of suicide in this population have been increasing since 2003, the CDC said.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death among American Indians and Alaska Natives aged 10 to 24, according to the CDC. Overall, it’s the leading cause of death in Colorado among that age group.
Mills said they don’t always have adequate resources on the reservation, but they will be leveraging them “as best as we can.” This means bringing in resources from off the reservation, she said, and extending the hours of counseling and treatment facilities.
“We’re trying as much as we can to get people to understand that they’re not alone.”
Generally, American Indians and Alaska Natives have lower odds of receiving mental health diagnoses or mental health treatment, according to a 2018 CDC report. And since a vast majority live in rural areas, there often are fewer health care providers.
“Struggles in Indian country, in reservation communities, are difficult,” said Ernest House Jr., former executive director of the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs.
House cited a lack of access for mental health services on the reservation that is all too common in rural Colorado.
“This is part of what American Indians face every day,” he said. “The impact on the community … it should be part of a much larger conversation.”
The two students are the latest in a growing crisis of youth suicides around the state that have alarmed Colorado leaders and community members.
This issue rose to the forefront in late August when 9-year-old Jamel Myles died by suicide in Denver after his mother said he was being bullied for coming out as gay.
In October, then-Attorney General Cynthia Coffman put nearly $3 million toward a first-of-its kind effort aimed at increasing access to pediatric mental health treatment around the state.
Earlier this month, a new report from the attorney general’s office found that the pressure placed on children and teenagers to do well in school and take part in extracurricular activities — and associated anxiety regarding failure — are among the biggest risk factors contributing to the rise in youth suicides in the state. Substance abuse and trauma are other prominent factors.
Colorado ranks 48th in the nation for the number of kids who need mental health services but cannot access them, according to a 2018 report from Mental Health in America. The state has the ninth highest suicide rate in the country.
Local school leaders like Haukeness are trying to figure out what they can do to stem the tide.
“The outcome of this is that we’re forming a task force of community partners to evaluate what we’re currently doing, and where we can improve for our students,” she said, adding that the district is providing extra counselors and social workers at school this week.
“We’ve been very concerned.”
