Confronting the Cape’s high rate of suicide

Barnstable County historically has the highest suicide rate among 18-29-year-olds in the state, according to Kimberely Mead-Walters, MD, co-founder and executive director of Sharing Kindness, a non-profit that promotes awareness of suicide and provides grief counseling and mental health education programs.

It is a problem across all demographics. In fact, the highest rate of suicide on Cape Cod is among octogenarians, she said.

“All age groups on Cape are 1.5 times more likely to die from suicide than their age counterparts over the bridge,” she said.

Rather than stigmatizing victims, we might consider the problems people struggle with and contributing risk factors at the individual, family and community levels, she said.

“We all need to be thinking, what is it about the Cape?” and not only “what was wrong with that person?” she said.

According to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, from 2023 (agency’s latest available report):

• Franklin, Dukes (Martha’s Vineyard) and Barnstable counties had the highest rates of suicide.
• Statewide, men killed themselves 3.1 times the rate of women.
• Statewide, suicide ideation among young people ages 14-24 was highest among those identifying as nonbinary, transgender and queer, and was also elevated for those who were Native American, multiracial or had one or more disabilities.

Cape Cod and the Islands, as well as Western Massachusetts, are considered rural areas, where access to mental health care and other support services are more limited than in cities. Living in a rural area represents a contributing risk factor for suicide, as well as being a veteran, a person of color or a tribal or indigenous person, Dr. Mead-Walters said.

Families and Young People

Suicide can devastate families. It can even cause a surviving member to take their own life. A study of data from 100 million people in Brazil found that suicide in a household quadrupled the suicide risk of another member of the household. It also caused a 32 percent increase in death from any cause among survivors, according to a JAMA Network Open article on the study published Nov. 25, 2025.

Dr. Mead-Walters’ 16-year-old son Jeremy died from suicide in 2016. His death and its aftermath led her to co-found Sharing Kindness in 2018 and to leave family practice in 2022.

“I really loved being a family physician; it was hard to leave. But I was compelled,” she said.

As a board-certified family physician associated with Cape Cod Healthcare, she said she had been unaware that a suicide could raise the chances of surviving family members becoming physically or mentally ill.

“I learned after my son's death, by looking at research results, that all of my surviving family members, myself included, were at increased risk of dying from suicide. I didn't know this from my training as a family physician.”

The shadow of her son’s death colored her family’s interactions with other people.

“I and my family often felt isolated. There were some people that really showed up for us, but many others would turn away, for instance, if they saw us at the grocery store. Or they would avoid mentioning Jeremy's death – a very big elephant in the room. I don't think most people meant not to support us – I think they often didn't know what to say or were worried about saying the wrong thing – so they said nothing at all.”

Help With Grief

Via public education, Sharing Kindness helps alleviate social awkwardness when interacting with people who have lost someone. The organization hosts Grief 101 presentations on how to start these conversations and support community members affected by a death, including stigmatized losses such as overdose, homicide and suicide.

She found her son’s friends lacked organized support, so she sought to provide evidence-based peer-to-peer suicide prevention. This eventually resulted in the bringing of Hope Squad into local schools four years ago. This program, now in thousands of schools across the country, has students who have been nominated by their peers to help educate their fellow students about suicide in order to reduce stigma and help spot signs of distress. The squads meet with advisors to learn about mental health and be trained to connect to their schoolmates. Dr. Mead-Walters said the program is now in 14 schools on the Cape and Martha’s Vineyard, and four more schools may add the program this year.

She said after the program took hold in one local school, “the principal met us in the hallway and said how he had never seen a program change a school’s culture so significantly in just one year” as Hope Squad did.

The program is needed because suicide is the second leading cause of death among youth 10-24 years of age, and young people are more likely to open up about suicide ideation to a peer, Dr. Mead-Walters said. Studies of suicide survivors show “a vast majority of young people don’t want to die – they need their pain to end.”

Help For All Ages

Because grief following suicide of a family member or other close loved one varies with the individual, Sharing Kindness offers programs tailored for different age groups and relationships, such as individuals, families with children and parents who have experienced child loss.

Each group is led by a licensed professional, either a licensed mental health counselor (LMHC) or a licensed independent clinical social worker (LICSW), she said. In addition to counseling and peer support groups, the organization also gives interested clients the opportunity to try complementary therapies, such as meditation, drumming or sound bowls. These can be helpful for people who have trouble verbalizing their grief to let their feelings out, she said. Some clients may take advantage of counseling or a peer group or a complementary therapy, and others may participate in a mix of assistance.

“Grief is unique for each of us,” Dr. Mead-Walters said. “What we provide at Sharing Kindness is judgement-free.”

The organization works with others in suicide prevention, including:

• The mobile crisis team at Bay Cove’s Behavioral Health and Wellness Center on Cape Cod, part of a state network that connects Barnstable County adults and children with locally available behavioral health services.
• The Samaritans on Cape Cod and the Islands, which provides people considering suicide or affected by suicide with compassionate people to listen.
• And, according to Dr. Mead-Walters, Sharing Kindness is in early discussions with Heroes in Transition, which works with veterans, active military members and their families, to collaborate on suicide prevention training and grief support.

Other state and national resources include:

• National suicide and crisis hotline: call or text 988. For veterans, press option 1, for Spanish language, press option 2.
• For state and national organizations, see the state Department of Public Health’s list of resources.

Despite growth in the amount and variety of suicide prevention and grief counseling available on Cape Cod, Dr. Mead-Walters said she is still concerned that there are a large number of people who have not accessed peer support groups.

“We need to address social determinants of health and related issues at all levels: individuals, families and the community,” she said.