On suicide in the Sierra foothills of California

Sammy Caiola reported on Capitol Public Radio's Insight program today, with a follow up on a story she did last year out of Amador County, population 38,091, just southeast of Sacramento County.  You can listen to the segment here, but I want to highlight just a few things Caiola pointed out about Amador County that make its residents vulnerable to suicide.  First is a lack of mental health services, meaning folks must often travel to Sacramento or another major city in the region for care, sometimes due to a shortage of providers at the county's sole hospital, in Jackson.  Aggravating this problem is dearth of public transportation.  Second and related to the lack of transportation infrastructure is the physical geography and built environment--lots of small-ish towns/cities, with people spread across the countryside amongst those small population clusters.  And third, Caiola suggests that a greater stigma attaches to mental health treatment in rural places than in urban ones.  These are all issues I have discussed in my scholarship, theorizing the legal relevance of aspects of rurality, e.g., lack of anonymity, material spatiality. 

The segment is well worth a listen in its entirety, as is Caiola's earlier reporting on what is happening health-wise in Amador County.