As Ohio and the nation mark Suicide Prevention Month this September, there is encouraging good news — but also discouraging bad news — on several key fronts. Sadly, the bad overshadows the good.

In sheer numbers, hopeful signs are emerging that show suicide rates stabilizing and even declining in some areas, including Mahoning County, so far this year. Nonetheless, nearly 50,000 Americans, 1,777 Ohioans and 95 Mahoning Valley residents saw no way out of their torment and struggles other than by successful self-destruction in 2023, the latest year for which complete data is available. Those numbers remain intolerably higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

In prevention efforts, a variety of in-person programs, telephone hot lines and online chat rooms have launched in recent years to offer life-saving counseling and support to troubled individuals of all ages and backgrounds before they follow through on plans to kill themselves.

But on the downside, penny-wise and pound-foolish public policy on all levels of government threaten the continuation and growth of such vitally important resources. Witness, for example, the administration of President Donald J. Trump’s shutdown this summer of the the 9-8-8 Suicide and Crisis Help Line for LGBTQ youth, which had served an estimated 1.5 million young people since its inception, according to the Trevor Project.

In treatment efforts locally, the good news is that mental health and suicide prevention efforts have been fortified with a hodgepodge of innovative new services from such agencies as Compass (Family and Community Services), Meridian Healthcare, Valley Counseling and county boards of Mental Heath and Recovery.

On the downside, however, officials on the front lines of the battle to lessen our region’s unacceptably above-average suicide rates remain rightly frustrated over the lack of a dedicated full-service psychiatric hospital in our midst.

In fact, it’s been 29 years since the Valley’s only comprehensive mental-health hospital — Woodside Receiving Hospital on Youngstown’s South Side — slammed its doors shut permanently amid the misguided trend at that time of mass deinstitutionalization of patients.

In their place, county jails and state prisons unwittingly have become the largest health providers for those mentally ill and inclined toward suicide.

Mahoning County Prosecutor Lynn Maro minces no words in her frustration over that vacuum in the Valley’s health-care domain: “We’ve had enough meetings, we’ve had enough discussions. It’s been 25 years in our criminal justice system of this crisis, and we need a lockdown facility in Mahoning County where our courts can send individuals with mental needs. They don’t belong in our county jail, they don’t belong in our state prisons. They belong in a facility where they can get help and assistance.”

Maro is absolutely, positively spot-on right. Fortunately, Duane Piccirilli, MCMHRB executive director, along with county commissioners and mental-health advocates, appear to be on track at long last to fill that gaping void.

Piccirilli confirmed recently that all of those stakeholders are committed to constructing a small psychiatric hospital in the Valley, and those efforts are gaining steam with a developer already in place.

We urge all involved to act with all due speed to transform those promising plans into brick-and-mortar reality. We’re confident grants on state and federal levels could help defray some of the costs of its construction and opening.

Perhaps such a facility could have prevented the very public and disturbing suicide by gunfire that unfolded in the emergency department of St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital in late August.

The victim, a 33-year-old military veteran who had been turned away for treatment elsewhere, snapped, disarmed a hospital security guard and shot himself to death.

Unless and until that proposed psychiatric hospital opens, those struggling with suicidal thoughts or other anguishing mental-health challenges must not hesitate to avail themselves of the plethora of caregiving resources already at their disposal.

One of the most convenient and proven tools for prevention has been the establishment of 9-8-8, the Nationwide Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which anyone can call, text or chat to be connected to a trained crisis counselor. The easy-to-remember, three-digit number provides 24/7 free and confidential support to anyone experiencing thoughts of suicide, a mental health or substance use crisis or other severe emotional stress. It’s also open to family and loved ones of those facing such struggles.

Other helpful resources include the Help Network of Northeast Ohio (dial 211), the Mahoning County Mental Health and Recovery Board at 330-746-2959 or the Trumbull County MHRB at 330-675-2765.

As the callous stigma that once surrounded suicide and mental health issues continues to fade, the doors open wider for stronger and more comprehensive services for all whose mental struggles impair their overall health. That means the future bodes well for delivering more good news toward lessening the scope and devastation that suicide inflicts on families, friends and communities everywhere.