If we’ve looking to put a dollar figure on a suicide death, it would probably be over a million dollars per death.

That sounds exorbitant, and it really is.

There was a study done about 20 years ago in the Maritimes that costed out a suicide death at $850,000 so 20 years later we can only imagine what that dollar figure is now. When we’re looking at how they calculated that dollar figure, we looked at direct and indirect costs associated with the death.

So direct costs would include things like first responders, if there’s an emergency room visit, the coroner or medical examiner, and then of course the funeral costs. When we look at indirect costs we calculate the years of life lost for the deceased, the unearned earnings that person would have earned and contributed to the economy the rest of their life, and then the family costs.

For each suicide death historical research says 6 to 20 people are taken down directly by that death and newer research is suggesting that that number is much higher. Of course it depends on the individual and the connections that person may have had. But if we think about the number of people that need to take leave, the counselling, the grief, the support, all those services add up and each death is well over $1 million.

Video created by: Aaron Bischoff,  Ethan Ror, Sarah Ensz.