Program addresses suicide rate among cops

Monday, March 30, 2009
BY CHRIS STURGIS
Special to the Times
WEST WINDSOR -- The rate of suicide among police officers is much higher than in the general population, but New Jersey is on the forefront of changing those grim statistics, an expert said recently at MercerCountyCommunity College.
Cherie Castellano, the director of the Cop2Cop program, the nation's first legislated law enforcement crisis hotline, spoke during the college's distinguished lecturers program.
She said the numbers are alarming. While the rate of suicide is 11 per 100,000 among the general population, it is 18 per 100,000 among police officers, meaning that more officers kill themselves than are killed in the line of duty.
Yet, the stigma of suicide is as great as the one that inhibits officers from seeking help, she said.
"If you get killed in the line of duty, you get the gun salutes, and the (aircraft) flyovers. If you kill yourself, we make believe you didn't exist in the police culture," she said.
New Jersey's efforts to reduce suicide of law enforcement officers and corrections officers emerged in the wake of two suicides in South Jersey in 1998, she said.
That same year, the state Department of Personnel established the hotline and in 2000 contracted with UMDNJ Behavioral Healthcare to provide intervention services.
The difficulty was providing help in a way that officers would accept it, given the stigma against seeking mental health treatment.
"The theory was that they only talk to each other because they only trust each other after what they see in this business," said Castellano, who said her husband is an undercover narcotics detective.
So the phone lines are answered by police officers with training from psychiatrists and psychologists. She said she keeps careful records about callers and outcomes so the program can be as effective as possible.
She said 159 callers said they were considering suicide. Of them, 157 received help, but two of them followed through on their plans to kill themselves.
The suicide rate among New Jersey officers over the past 10 years is lower, about 6.5 percent per 100,000, which can be attributed to the program and greater efforts for education and awareness, she said.
The call statistics came from a total of 23,000 calls for assistance with a variety of issues, including work stress, depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, domestic problems with spouse or children, legal issues and aggressive or violent behavior.
Officers need help coping with the stress of a very public job, where their decisions can be second-guessed and labeled as "excessive use of force" or "racial profiling," she said.
For more information about the program, visit
The hotline number is (866) Cop-2cop, or (866) 267-2267.
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