Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Aug 02/00) - The number of suicides in Yellowknife last year were well above normal, according to the NWT Coroner's Office statistics.

Almost 16 per cent -- five of the 27 recorded deaths -- were classified suicides. Usually the coroner's office sees between zero and two, said chief coroner Percy Kinney.

"Last year was a very bad year for suicides," he said. "We don't know why it happened like that for that year."

Kinney said the Yellowknife figure this year is as high as the average number of suicides usually seen across the Northwest Territories. This year, the actual territorial number jumped to 16.

Although the economy may be a factor in reasoning suicide increases in places in the south, Kinney said there are too many factors, such as alcoholism and residential school abuse, to find a simple answer here.

"In the NWT there are so many things at play and the suicide issue is so complex that you can't nail it down to one thing," he said. "That's why it's so hard to deal with, because there's no quick fix."

As for other causes of death in Yellowknife, 14 were considered natural but even that, too, can be concerning, he added.

"Chronic alcoholism over the long-term can be deemed a natural death," Kinney explained. "So don't let that natural thing fool you."

He added that he knows of at least one death classified as natural last year that was the result of alcohol abuse over many years.

Seven deaths were considered accidental, three of which included motor vehicles and one was undetermined.

"It was a stabbing in which we were unable to determine whether it was an accident or a homicide," Kinney said, adding the manner in which causes of death are categorized in the coroner's office are different to what the courts deem accidental or intentional.

There were no recorded homicides, the fifth cause in which deaths are categorized.