ShareThisSALT LAKE CITY - Hill Air Force Base's top officer has ordered an investigation into whether prescription drug abuse may be a factor in a troubling number of suicides among base employees.
As many as three Hill workers have taken their lives in recent weeks, according to officials who say they can confirm one suicide and are waiting for the completion of investigations into two other deaths. Those deaths follow at least three other suicides by base employees since the beginning of the year.
Last year, at least eight members of "Team Hill" killed themselves, a number which represents a rate of self-inflicted death that is significantly higher than the rate in Utah as a whole -- which is already significantly higher than the national average, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
Studies also suggest that the Beehive State is among the nation's leaders in prescription drug abuse, and Major Gen. Andrew Busch said he wants to better understand the issues connecting the Hill employees that have killed themselves.
"There are a lot of things we're looking at," said Busch, who identified suicide as one of the problems he aimed to address when he took over as commander at Hill's Ogden Air Logistics Center in July 2009. "One of the things we're looking at is the illegal use of prescription drugs ... We are exploring what the options are to determining whether or not that type of behavior is going on."
Busch said that drug abuse has been a recurring theme in some of the post-suicide investigations conducted by his command, although he noted other issues -- failed relationships, economic troubles and mental health issues -- have also been found as factors in the deaths.
"We're trying to identify it," he said. "We haven't been able to develop a theory for why people are taking their lives."
Busch and other base leaders have steadfastly denied that work pressures at the installation are to blame.
"I don't find it credible that our employees are under significantly more or less stress than someone who works at a major corporation," that does similarly strenuous work, Busch said.
Hill's suicide problem -- which appears to be centered on its civilian workers -- first came to public attention in the wake of the death of 39-year-old sheet metal machinist Donald Cleavenger, who killed himself in an aircraft hangar after receiving a poor performance review on the last day of 2008. Most of the deaths, however, occurred off base.
Since then, families of several other suicide victims have come forward, including relatives of Joni Berriochoa, who left behind a journal labeled "Joni's Hell," in which she described problems she was having with her manager. The journal indicated that she had complained to superiors, but she felt as though no changes were made.
(E-mail reporter Matthew D. LaPlante at mlaplante(at)sltrib.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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