A new British study has shed more light on the elevated risk of death by suicide among people on the autism spectrum.

The study, first published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, found that 10% of people who died by suicide in the United Kingdom had evidence of likely undiagnosed autism. That is 11 times higher than the rate of autism in the UK.

The results of the British study are in line with previous research on the link between autism and suicide. Last year, a Danish study found that individuals with diagnosed autism spectrum disorder (ASD) had more than three times the risk of suicide attempts and suicide completion compared to the general population. And a meta-analysis conducted by Columbia University and University of Colorado researchers concluded that children and adults with ASD had more than three times the risk of self-harm and a substantially increased risk for suicidality.

“The findings from our systematic review and meta-analysis underscore the need for targeted interventions to reduce the risk of self-harm in people with autism,” said a co-author of the latter study, Dr. Ashley Blanchard, assistant professor of emergency medicine at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Within the autistic population, a Swedish study found that death by suicide is more common among individuals with mild autism than severe autism. The same study also found that autistic women are at greater risk than autistic men – notably, this is the reverse of the gender breakdown of suicides in the general population.

Why are people on the autism spectrum at elevated risk of suicide?

Among the heaviest emotional burdens carried by many people on the spectrum, especially women, is “camouflaging;” that is, making constant and elaborate effort to hide the signs of autism. A 2021 study found that camouflaging comes with a significant cost: physical exhaustion, anxiety, depression, and erosion of the sense of identity.

People on the autism spectrum may grow up being bullied or isolated socially, and the pain of those experiences can build up over time. Studies have also shown a connection between unmet support needs and suicidality in autistic people. This is a widespread problem: according to the National Institutes of Health, the majority of autistic adults have unmet needs for functional skills services, employment or vocation services, and mental and behavioral health services.

One of the key warning signs of suicide risk is feeling “trapped,” like there is no way out of an overwhelming situation. As the American Association of Suicidology notes, autistic people often have some cognitive inflexibility, meaning they can easily get stuck in a negative thought pattern and have difficulty considering alternatives.

Recognizing suicide warning signs in people on the autism spectrum can be difficult

Autism spectrum disorder affects perception, social interaction, communication, and patterns of behavior. One consequence of ASD is that the warning signs of suicidality may present differently in someone with ASD compared to a neurotypical person.

Much more research is needed to identify the warning signs of suicidality in people on the autism spectrum and develop screening methods and interventions that meet the unique needs of autistic people. For instance, people on the spectrum may not answer standard suicide screening questions as readily as others, or their answers may require more interpretation to assess the true risk of suicide. As an important step forward, the American Association of Suicidology recently released resources on its website for autistic people in crisis.

It’s also clear that the people who know an autistic person best – parents, siblings, partners, and close friends – are best-positioned to recognize that something may be wrong. Medical and mental health professionals need to listen to those voices and take suicide warning signs seriously. We know that people on the autism spectrum carry a high degree of suicide risk, and the healthcare system needs to respond accordingly to mitigate that risk.

Victims’ families may have legal recourse

Additional research and suicide prevention resources for people on the autism spectrum are sorely needed because far too many autistic lives are cut short by suicide. The Law Offices of Skip Simpson has the experience and knowledge to investigate the circumstances of suicide and advise families on how to proceed during an extraordinarily difficult time. Our law firm is based in Texas, but we serve clients nationwide. If you have lost a loved one to suicide completion, contact attorney Skip Simpson today.

One of an attorney’s most serious responsibilities is respecting client confidentiality. However, a still greater responsibility is protecting the client’s life.

Last year, the State Bar of Texas rightly voted to amend the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct to allow lawyers to disclose confidential information “when the lawyer has reason to believe it is necessary to do so in order to prevent the client from dying by suicide.” (Rule 1.05. Confidentiality of Information)

The amended rule went into effect this year, allowing Texas attorneys to help their clients get the assistance they need to prevent suicide.

Here’s what attorney Skip Simpson said in support of the rule change:

“It may be one of the most dangerous situations—a client who is considering killing himself or herself. Should the lawyer reach out for assistance to prevent a suicide attempt? The answer is yes—and the lawyer needs a confidentiality of information exception to permit disclosure to prevent client death by suicide.

Lawyers may be confronted with clients who are so despondent about their circumstances that they state they are considering “leaving this earth,” “just disappearing,” or something else that worries the lawyer.

In those cases it is appropriate to ask the client, “Are you suicidal?”

Once the lawyer has started screening for suicidal thinking, the lawyer cannot be hampered by the notion of confidentiality. Even for mental health specialists, where there are concerns that the patient may be at risk for suicide, confidentiality is trumped by the need to save a life. Information from family, for instance, may be lifesaving; at such times, confidentiality must be broken.

The U.S. surgeon general and the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention issued the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention. Goal 7 of the report includes lawyers as professionals whose work brings them into contact with clients with suicide risk. The goal is to train lawyers on how to address suicidal ideations and on how to respond to those affected.

Part of responding to clients affected by suicidal thinking is reaching out for assistance.”

Originally published in the Texas Bar Journal, February 2021.

But many states aren’t ready for the rollout

This year, we will see an important development in the fight to prevent deaths by suicide. In July 2022, 988 will go live as the shortcut to call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

The hope is that the 988 shortcut for the suicide hotline will become as well-known as the 911 shortcut for emergency services, leading to more calls, quicker crisis response, and ultimately, fewer deaths.

The problem is that most states have not ramped up their call center and crisis response capacity to match the expected increase in calls. Only four states have passed implementation laws that include fee measures to pay for the increase in calls. Just six states are prepared with statewide crisis services, according to the National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI).

Most suicides are preventable, and most people who are at risk seek help

Despite persistent myths to the contrary, the evidence says that most suicides are preventable. The suicidal impulse is an acute, transient experience that can and usually does pass if delayed.

Another myth is that people who die by suicide were unwilling to seek help. In fact, studies have shown that more than half of people who died by suicide sought help in the six months prior to their deaths.

The key is to have the right interventions in place, and that’s why suicide lifelines are vital. Lifelines allow people at risk of suicide to speak with a trained crisis worker who can listen empathetically, provide emotional support, and recommend other resources. This is especially vital for people in underserved communities with few other options.

Immediate intervention is key when someone is at risk of suicide

When 988 becomes available, people at risk of suicide will be just three digits away from support. It’s an important improvement because the task of looking up a 10-digit phone number could be enough to deter someone from calling.

However, if states aren’t prepared to handle the increase in call volume, they could trade one problem for another. In states that don’t have robust local centers to handle calls to the suicide lifeline, many calls are routed to a backup center in the nationwide network. “When calls are re-routed to centers out-of-state, callers in crisis often wait two to three times longer, receive fewer linkages to effective local care, and are more likely to abandon their calls,” according to a Lifeline report.

Much more needs to be done to enhance the lifelines. In addition to hiring enough staff to answer all their calls, states need to offer chat and text messaging capabilities and geo-location functionality so that people with out-of-state phone numbers are still routed to call centers in the states where they are physically located.

More broadly, greater investment is needed in other mental health services – outpatient care, inpatient treatment, therapy, safety planning, monitoring, and so on – as part of the overall suicide care continuum. Suicide hotlines play a vital role, but other services need to be ramped up as well so that hotline workers can refer callers to those services as needed. It does a caller little good if they need inpatient care but there are no inpatient beds available.

Legal help is available for victims’ families

This investment in prevention is needed because far too many lives are cut short by preventable suicides. The Law Offices of Skip Simpson has the experience and knowledge to investigate the circumstances of suicide and advise families on how to proceed during an extraordinarily difficult time. Although our law firm is based in Texas, we serve clients nationwide. If you have lost a loved one to suicide completion, contact attorney Skip Simpson today.

A string of suicides at U.S. colleges and universities is renewing calls for more on-campus mental health services.

The situation is grim with some campuses experiencing multiple instances of students taking their own lives. Over the last six months, there have been four Worcester Polytechnical Institute, Massachusetts, student deaths attributed to suicide or apparent suicide, according to the media reports.

Similar fatalities have been recently reported on campuses in North Carolina, Missouri, California, and New Hampshire.

A recent study found that, nationwide, more than 14% of students said that they had seriously considered suicide in the past year. This is more than twice the rate in 2007.

People are calling on university and college officials to step up and offer the services students need to cope.

A Question of Campus Negligence

Under certain conditions, colleges and universities can be held liable for student suicides.

In many, but not all, cases, failing to provide students with reasonable mental health services and ignoring signs of suicide is an act of negligence.

Various courts have determined that colleges and universities have special relationships with their students that obligate them to fulfill a “duty of care” and act to prevent suicides.

Student suicide is a grave tragedy. When students die by suicide, it is important for their loved ones to consider a wrongful death lawsuit against the school and/or other liable parties.

In addition to securing answers and justice for yourself, a lawsuit could force a college or university to provide better services that help to prevent future suicides.

Calls for Improvement

The mental health crisis that has affected young people has attracted the attention of the federal government. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy called for action in a December statement.

“The challenges today’s generation of young people face are unprecedented and uniquely hard to navigate,” he said. “Our obligation to act is not just medical — it’s moral.

“We have an unprecedented opportunity as a country to rebuild in a way that refocuses our identity and common values, puts people first, and strengthens our connections to each other.”

COVID-19 Impact

Addressing the mental health crisis is critical. The rate of depression among college and university students is high.

In the 2020-21 academic year, 41% of students reported symptoms of depression and 34%  reported feeling burdened by anxiety, according to data from the 2021 Healthy Minds Study.

The COVID-19 pandemic has added extra weight to this large task. As many campuses have returned to in-person classes, administrators have worked to balance the need for pandemic-related restrictions, such as mask-wearing and quarantines and medical reports, with students’ deep need to socialize, make new friends, and gather in person.

On top of the pandemic, piling on even more stressors, are things like: a deep nationwide political divide, racism, climate change, social media, limited health care access, low wages, depressing economic outlook, and the strain of virtual learning in isolation.

Help For Families Experiencing Suicide

If you have lost a loved one to suicide, it is important that you find out who is liable for their death. You may be able to save others from a tragic end. People and entities that may be liable in wrongful death suicide lawsuits include:

• Drug manufacturers
• Health care provides, doctors, and therapists
• Health care facilities (hospitals, wards, etc.)
• Educational facilities that may not have provided services or turned a blind eye to bullying and other serious harassment of students
• Negligent or malicious individuals

No amount of money can bring a loved one back, but by seeking compensation after a suicide, you may be able to help offset current and future financial losses to your family and save lives.

We Will Fight To Get You Answers and Justice

At The Law Offices of Skip Simpson, we have the experience and knowledge to get you the answers and justice you deserve after a loved one dies by suicide. With integrity and compassion, we investigate the circumstances of suicide and advise families on how to proceed during an extraordinarily difficult time.

As a nationally-recognized law firm, we help families across the United States who have lost loved ones due to suicide. If you lost a loved one to suicide, contact our law firm today to see how we can help you.

Researchers with the Center for Suicide Prevention and Research have found an alarming trend related to youth suicides among black children, finding there has been a significant increase in suicides among teens ages 15 to 17 from 2003 to 2017.

Black teen girls are the most at risk

Dr. Arielle Sheftall, the lead author of the study which was published recently in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, said that the annual percentage increase was much higher among black girls, who were about twice as likely to die by suicide as black boys.

Dr. Christine Crawford, a psychiatrist at Boston Medical Center and the Codman Square Health Center in Dorchester, said that in many cases black girls weren’t getting any intervention for suicidal ideation until after they end up in the emergency room due to attempting suicide. Even though treatments and interventions exist, they often do not arrive in time to help the children who are struggling.

“It’s heartbreaking because we know there are treatment options to prevent this,” Crawford said. “One reason Black youngsters sometimes don’t go through therapy is that they’re reluctant to confide in a person ‘who doesn’t look like them,’ ” Crawford said.

Of the approximately 8,000 child psychiatrists in the U.S., only 1% are people of color.

The study found that black girls were more likely to experience a breakup and would die by suicide within 24 hours of an argument, whereas black boys were more likely to experience a legal problem or face criminal charges prior to ending their life.

Girls were most likely to die by overdosing and boys were most likely to use a firearm, according to the study. In some cases, the children contacted family members before they chose to end their life, Crawford said.

“They want people to know they’re in distress,” she said, “but there is still a part of them that wants to be found, that wants to live.”

Sheftall and her team discovered that younger children between the age of 5 and 11 were more likely to have experienced family or school problems. If they had a mental health diagnosis, it was often a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which has several comorbidities with other mental health illnesses that may have been undiagnosed.

An attorney can help you find answers

If you or anyone you know has lost a child to suicide, The Law Offices of Skip Simpson has the experience and knowledge to investigate the circumstances of suicide and advise families on how to proceed during an extraordinarily difficult time. Our law firm is based in Texas but we serve clients nationwide.

If you have suffered the loss of a loved one who ended their life by suicide, contact attorney Skip Simpson today.

Recent research by the University of Washington and New York University has shown that more than one-third of high school students who reported engaging in some sort of suicidal behavior or ideation have gone on to attempt suicide.

The research was published in the Prevention Science journal and used the data from high schools across the country that had taken the National Youth Risk Behavior survey in 2015, 2017, or 2019. The researchers focused on the results of more than 7,500 high schoolers who stated they either had suicidal thoughts, a plan to end their life, or reported attempting suicide.

Examining the risk factors

The study showed that there were several risk factors, including bullying, depression, cigarette smoking, abuse of prescription drugs, or a history of sexual violence that increased the likelihood of a student moving from simple suicidal ideation into a suicide attempt.

Identifying and isolating the behaviors and risk factors is crucial to helping ensure that prevention measures are targeted at the right people, said the study’s lead author Meghan Romanelli, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Washington.

“Most adolescents who think about suicide don’t go on to attempt it, so in the analysis, we wanted to separate out adolescents who attempted suicide from those who thought about suicide but did not attempt in order to identify what factors may have put youth at higher risk,” Romanelli said. “These differences are important because it allows us to deploy prevention and intervention efforts that are targeted to the adolescent’s level of risk.”

What the study revealed

Of the roughly 7,500 students examined in the study, about 25 percent of them said they had considered suicide. About 38% said they had created a plan to end their life but did not follow through with suicide attempted, and 35% said they’d thought about suicide, created a plan for suicide, and then attempted suicide. In addition, 3% of respondents said they had a spur-of-the-moment suicide attempt without any prior thoughts or plans.

The study also noted higher risks of suicide attempts in certain populations. Hispanic and Latino youth were 1.6 times more likely to report a suicide attempt with thoughts and plans as opposed to having suicidal thoughts only, and four times as likely to report a suicide attempt with just ideation and no plan. Young men, in general, were more likely to report attempting suicide without any thoughts or plans. A feeling of hopelessness was common, among young people who thought about suicide or had attempted suicide with thoughts and plans

Funding for the study came from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the National Institute of Mental Health.

Legal help is available

Although the research can help people look for warning signs, too many people continue to lose loved ones to suicide completion. The Law Offices of Skip Simpson has the experience and knowledge to investigate the circumstances of suicide and advise families on how to proceed during an extraordinarily difficult time. Although our law firm is based in Texas, we serves clients nationwide. If you have suffered the loss of a loved one who ended their life by suicide, contact attorney Skip Simpson today.

Every September, mental health advocates, prevention organizations, community members, peers, and survivors join together for National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month to help raise awareness of a problem that has led to more than 40,000 deaths last year in America.

Like many other conditions, suicidal ideation is relatively common but is rarely discussed due to an unfair stigma that surrounds the topic. One of the goals of National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month is to remove that stigma and enable people to ask if their friends and loved ones are experiencing suicidal ideation so they can discuss their feelings without judgment.

Research has shown that people who are thinking about suicide feel relieved when they are asked about it in a caring way. Findings suggest that acknowledging suicidal thoughts decreases a person’s risk of suicide, rather than increasing it.

Raising awareness

In addition, National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month is a time to inform the public about some of the facts about suicide in America: Here are some of the facts and figures that the National Alliance on Mental Health, has publicized on its website.

• 78% of all people who die by suicide are male.

• Although more women than men attempt suicide, men are nearly 4x more likely to die by suicide.

• Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death among people ages 10 to 34 and the 10th leading cause of death overall in the U.S.

• The overall suicide rate in the U.S. has increased by 35% since 1999.

• 46% of people who die by suicide had a diagnosed mental health condition.

• While nearly half of individuals who die by suicide have a diagnosed mental health condition, research shows that 90% experienced symptoms.

• Lesbian, gay and bisexual youth are 4x more likely to attempt suicide than straight youth.

• Transgender adults are nearly 12x more likely to attempt suicide than the general population.

One of the best resources available for people experiencing suicidal ideations is the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, (1-800-273-8255), a 24-hour confidential and anonymous service for individuals to discuss how they are feeling with trained call-takers. The Lifeline is working to focus on ways people can help those they care about.

According to the NSPL, one of the best ways to help is to simply be there and listen to someone speak about suicide without judgment. Their message during National Suicide Prevention Month is #BeThe1To as in: be the one to be there for someone in need.

Legal help is available

Despite all efforts at prevention, too many people continue to lose loved ones to suicide completion. The Law Offices of Skip Simpson has the experience and knowledge to investigate the circumstances of suicide and advise families on how to proceed during an extraordinarily difficult time. Although our law firm is based in Texas, we serve clients nationwide, so if you have suffered the loss of a loved one, contact attorney Skip Simpson today to learn more about your legal rights and options.

Although one might believe that teaching kids how to help prevent their classmates from attempting suicide might be a top priority, legislators have balked at the opportunity to mandate suicide prevention education in schools—even in some states where suicide is relatively rampant.

In July, the Wyoming Legislature declined to pass a proposed bill that would have made suicide prevention education a requirement for all students in public schools. The legislature made this decision even though Wyoming currently has the highest suicide rate in the nation at 29 suicides each year per 100,000 residents.

“We’ve run into challenges where legislators are reluctant to pass an unfunded mandate,” said Nicole Gibson, the senior director for state policy and grassroots advocacy at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

For some perspective, Wyoming’s suicide rate is more than double the national average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state’s legislature does not deny that suicide is a problem for the state, but they believe that local control of educational content is more important. As such, legislators refused to pass the mandate, and instead, they left the decision to individual school boards.

Whose responsibility is it?

Some indicated that suicide prevention should be the responsibility of churches and families, others feel it’s a concern for the state department of health and still, others think school is a fine place to teach these skills but were reluctant to increase the workload of teachers. Some critics have pointed out that Wyoming has a history of passing unfunded mandates in schools, pointing out a law passed in 2018 that required schools to teach computer science.

The purpose of suicide prevention education is to help students notice when signs of suicidal ideation are present in their classmates and help them understand how to talk and listen to them in an empathetic matter and to show them resources that suicidal people can turn to for help, such as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255). The goal is to give the person feeling suicidal thoughts hope that better days are coming and life is worth living. CDC Research has shown that intervention can make a difference and lower suicide rates.

“Young people really go to their peers for so much and really trust their peers, maybe more so than adults, depending on their age,” said Gibson. “So making sure that [young people] are empowered to reach out for help when they notice those warning signs is so important. It’s a sign of strength to seek help, it’s a sign of strength to reach out.”

It doesn’t always work in every case, as suicide is quite complicated. It can occur for a vast number of reasons and no singular strategy of suicide prevention can guarantee success. However, it is clear that something needs to be done to bring the rate of suicide down in a state like Wyoming.

Currently, 12 states, including Texas and Vermont, require that education on suicide awareness and prevention be included in the curriculum, the foundation has been working to increase this number as part of its work.

See how an attorney can help you

The Law Offices of Skip Simpson has the experience and knowledge to investigate the circumstances of suicide and advise families on how to proceed during an extraordinarily difficult time. Although the law firm is based in Texas, it serves clients nationwide, so if you have suffered the loss of a loved one who was attending a school without any suicide prevention education, contact attorney Skip Simpson today.

With the growing popularity of cannabis usage throughout America as a result of the legalization of cannabis in 18 states, further research has been conducted into some of the effects of marijuana usage on people’s mental health. One such study conducted by The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) showed that there may be an association between cannabis usage and suicidal ideation.

“Using nationally representative data, we found that trends in suicidal ideation, plan, and attempt varied by the pattern of cannabis use … among adults aged 18 to 34 years from 2008 to 2019, a time of marked increases in both cannabis use and suicidality,” the authors wrote in the study.

Key takeaways from the survey

Roughly 280,000 adults were surveyed for this study, which showed marked increases in suicidal ideation among adults who reported using cannabis on a daily basis across nearly all demographic groups and subgroups, high school students being the sole exception to the observed trend. Groups with particularly high increases included non-Hispanic Black participants and women. Even participants who said they didn’t use cannabis every day—or fewer than 300 days per year—”were more likely to have suicidal ideation and to plan or attempt suicide than those who did not use the drug at all,” the researchers found.

“From 2008 to 2019, suicidal ideation, plan, and attempt increased 40% to 60% over increases ascribed to cannabis use and a major depressive episode. Future research is needed to examine this increase in suicidality and to determine whether it is due to cannabis use or overlapping risk factors,” the research stated.

Cannabis use has increased over time

During the past decade, cannabis use among US adults has increased markedly. From 2008 to 2019, the number of adults with past-year cannabis use doubled from 22.6 million to 45.0 million. In parallel, the number of adults with cannabis use disorder (CUD) increased from 3.4 million to 4.1 million, and adults with daily or near-daily cannabis use (hereafter daily cannabis use) nearly tripled from 3.6 million to 9.8 million.

A  parallel increase in suicidality (ideation, plan, attempt, and death) was also noted among adults using cannabis. However, associations between cannabis use and suicidality among young adults are still poorly understood. While the study showed an association between suicidality and cannabis use, it did not show direct causation between them, leading researchers to suggest further study into the effects of cannabis.

“While we cannot establish that cannabis use caused the increased suicidality we observed in this study, these associations warrant further research, especially given the great burden of suicide on young adults,” said US National Institute on Drug Abuse Director Dr. Nora Volkow, the study’s senior author, in a statement.

Find out how a lawyer can help you

The Law Offices of Skip Simpson has the experience and knowledge to investigate the circumstances of a suicide and advise families on how to proceed during an extraordinarily difficult time. Although the law firm is based in Texas, it serves clients nationwide, so if you have suffered the loss of a loved one who was a heavy user of cannabis, contact attorney Skip Simpson today.

The past year or so has been difficult for just about everyone, but it has been an especially challenging time for groups of people that were already facing unique mental health challenges, such as the LGBTQ community.

LGBTQ Youth Mental Health Survey

The Trevor Project 2021 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health collected data on how the past year of living through the COVID-19 pandemic has had on LGBTQ youth. What they found provided a glimpse into the experiences and difficulties that they were going through and how many of them contemplated ending their lives as a result.

Here are some key findings:

1. Researchers found that 42% of LGBTQ youth seriously contemplated killing themselves, including more than half of transgender and non-binary youths. Of those, 12% of white youth attempted suicide, 21% of Black youth, 21% of multiracial youth, 18% of Latinx youth, and 12% of Asian/Pacific Islander youth.
2. Seventy percent of people surveyed said they categorized their mental health as “poor” during most if not all of the past year, and over 80% of LGBTQ youth surveyed stated that the pandemic had made their living situation more stressful, especially since only about one-third of those surveyed said that their household was LGBTQ supporting.
3. Aside from the obvious increase in stress caused by a deadly disease that killed more than half a million people, the political situation during 2020 was also noted as a major source of stress in the LGBTQ community: 94% of respondents to the survey reported that recent politics had negatively impacted their mental health.
4. For transgender and non-binary youths, the survey found that one of the largest factors that affected suicide attempts was if people in their household were willing to respect their pronouns. Those who did not have their pronouns respected were found to have attempted suicide at double the rate of those whose pronouns were respected.

The mission of The Trevor Project’s Research Department is to produce and use innovative research that brings new knowledge and clinical implications to the field of suicidology and LGBTQ youth mental health. The complete survey results along with the methodology used to conduct the survey can be found here.

How You Can Get the Help You Need

Perhaps one of the most disturbing findings in the survey was that 48% of respondents said that they would have wanted to get counseling from a mental health professional but could not gain access to one during the past year. In times of mental crisis and instability, access to appropriate mental health professionals can sometimes quite literally be the difference between life and death.

At the Law Offices of Skip Simpson, our team has the experience, expertise, and knowledge to investigate the circumstances of suicide and help families and loved ones get through what is an extraordinarily difficult time. We serve clients nationwide, so if you have a loved one who was part of the LGBTQ community who died by suicide after receiving inadequate mental health care or harassment for their lifestyle choice, contact attorney Skip Simpson today.