EXCLUSIVE — The first suicidologist for U.S. Customs and Border Protection does not believe the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border is to blame for the high number of suicides among employees but that several factors, including relationship problems and management status, are the leading trends.
“They do talk about the border conditions decreasing their morale, but in no way is that the cause of suicide,” said Dr. Kent Corso, who works in the CBP commissioner’s behavioral safety and risk management office. “If it were, I think we’d see many more triggers being work-related instead of triggers being family-related or relationship-related.”
Since January, 14 federal law enforcement agents and officers stationed at the nation’s borders have taken their own lives — tying the annual record with one month left before the year’s end.
Some have proposed that the border crisis is the stressor. CBP’s Border Patrol, Air and Marine Operations, and Office of Field Operations have responded to more illegal immigrants encountered at the border under President Joe Biden than during any other period in U.S. history.
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However, in an exclusive interview with the Washington Examiner, Corso explained what the agency’s scientific approach to this dilemma has revealed.
Relationship problems were No. 1 factor in recent deaths
In the case of three Border Patrol agents who died in a 15-day period in November, Corso said the agency determined that each suicide was specifically triggered by relationship problems.
“What I can share without violating privacy is that of the most recent suicides, they were related to relationship problems,” Corso said in a Zoom call.
Additionally, Corso listed alcohol and substance abuse, mental health and depression, discipline history, and work stress as other lesser factors, with work stress being the last in the list of five reasons.
Management struggles more than rank-and-file employees
Last year, Corso became the first “suicidologist” in a nonmilitary federal department. He spent most of his first year meeting with the agency’s 60,000 employees around the world, including a large portion assigned to the U.S.-Mexico border.
“We’re taking a scientific approach to this, and one of the things that we’re recognizing as far as patterns is we have a higher incidence of suicide among supervisors,” Corso said. “And so we’re trying to figure out what is it about being a supervisor that is potentially related to this.”
CBP shared data with the Washington Examiner that goes back to 2007, the lowest year on record for suicides. The number peaked at 14 in 2009. However, CBP has grown significantly over the past 13 years so the suicides this year made up a lower percentage of the workforce than it did 13 years ago.
Prevention
CBP has taken a two-prong approach to employee mental health. First, it is focused on helping employees deal with problems when they are small to resolve them before they feel insurmountable.
“The name of the game is making it OK to seek help — educating people that we’re not just going to fire them. They’re not just going to, you know, be hauled off, that we’re going to slow things down — because that’s what we have to do in these circumstances is slow things down and just support the people,” Corso said. “We are trying to de-stigmatize seeking help for anything, from financial problems to substance problems to relationship problems to stress.”
This fiscal year, Congress gave CBP $23 million to cover behavioral health programs and the hiring of 40 clinicians and 13 psychiatrists at its facilities nationwide to learn about the specific struggles employees are having and point them in the best direction for assistance. To date, five psychiatrists have been hired.
Corso did not know how many clinicians have been hired. Mental health workers cannot diagnose conditions or prescribe medication to employees but can refer them to the appropriate help in the private sector.
“Postvention”
CBP has developed a “postvention” response when tragedies do take place. Postvention is done to reduce the likelihood of that type of incident happening soon after.
The postvention strategy is twofold: minimize the extent to which losses are experienced as traumatic and prevent contagion, which happens when a suicide triggers others to take their lives.
Traumatic incident response teams that include trained peer support, chaplains, psychologists, and clinicians will immediately head to the affected region to give those affected by the death an outside, objective person to talk to versus a supervisor or coworker.
“There’s no evidence that we have, as we look at this, that it is a contagion,” Corso said about the three deaths in November. “The other thing that there is is called a point cluster, and they use this in epidemiology research. The Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention] use this to look at things like, frankly, COVID, and it does look like there may be a point cluster. And all that means is a higher likelihood of a suicide in the same area or within a certain amount of time. So that’s something that we’re still looking into.”
Going forward
Last September, Corso began a monthly podcast with CBP employees to make talking about suicide, loss, and stress less scary. To date, CBP has posted 18 podcasts.
CBP also rolled out several extensive social media campaigns.
“If people within this agency can’t see things changing, either they are not paying close attention or they’re refusing to accept the genuine widespread support from top to bottom for their well-being,” Corso said.
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Despite the overhaul of how the nation’s largest law enforcement agency handles mental and behavioral health, Corso admitted it is attempting mission impossible.
“There’s never been a time in history where we’ve reduced the suicide rates and sustained lower rates consistently,” Corso said. “We are highly motivated to bend the curve as much as we can. We do have to accept the reality that it’s never been done. And so this idea of getting to zero suicides is unfortunately just not reality.”
