craigdailypress.com

Year-end statistics indicate Moffat County finished 2008 with its second-lowest total since 2000 in a category both grim and troublesome - suicide.

According to figures from Moffat County Coroner Owen Grant, there were four self-inflicted deaths in Moffat County in 2008.

Combined with one the year before, in 2007, Moffat County is coming off one of its lowest two-year stretches in 10 years.

The county averaged two suicides a year from 1994 to 1998, according to the coroner's numbers.

However, at the outset of a new decade in 2000, the numbers started increasing.

The high-water marks were 2005 and 2006, when 13 total Moffat County residents died from suicide.

Since 1999, there have been 39 suicide deaths in Moffat County.

Numbers a county over aren't all that different.

According to statistics, 33 people in Routt County suffered self-inflicted deaths since 1999, however, that total number doesn't include figures from 2008, which weren't available as of press time Thursday.

From 1994 to 1998, Routt County averaged four a year. Four times since 1999, the year-end number in Routt County was five.

But, the numbers reveal, there were none in 2007.

Yampa Valley Partners, an area non-profit agency, gathered suicide data for Moffat and Routt counties during the preparation of its Community Indicators Report, a compilation of social, environmental, civic and economic trends and issues in the Yampa Valley.

Partners received the information with the assistance of county coroners and Colorado West Regional Mental Health Center, a non-profit agency that provides outpatient mental health services to Northwest Colorado residents.

The Community Indicators Report is published every two years. It will be available Feb. 1 in Steamboat Springs and Feb. 4 in Craig.

Joshua Roberts can be reached at 875-1791, or jroberts@craigdailypress.com.