For years, Valencia Sagnia and her 13 siblings — along with their parents and their growing families — have met at their childhood home every Friday to eat dinner and play cards.

But after one seemingly joyful get-together nearly a decade ago, Sagnia received a call from the fiancée of her younger brother that she had just seen hours earlier. Marquist Spivey, dubbed “Kiki” by loved ones, had died by suicide — at 32.

Sagnia is still trying to make sense of the death of her brother, a father of five who struggled with depression.

She spiraled into grief, and then anger, but then became a volunteer with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and will soon be a licensed clinical mental health counselor.

As September — National Suicide Prevention Month — draws to a close, she’s shining a light on the declining mental health of Cook County’s Black residents, which has taken a turn for the worse since the pandemic. In fact, Black residents in Cook County are the only racial group whose suicide rates are higher now than before the pandemic.

The problem is even worse for men, who have suicides rates that are more than three times higher than women in Cook County. Advocates say there isn’t much encouragement for men — particularly Black men— to discuss mental health.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

“Mental health is very real, especially in the Black community,” Sagnia says. “We use prayer a lot. It’s like, ‘OK, we can pray, but we also have to walk. We have to take physical steps to do the work.’ ”

While grassroots mental health organizations and groups have popped up in the Chicago area, city-run resources haven’t done enough outreach in suicide prevention, say residents who have lost loved ones.

But also, a lack of messaging directly to communities in need — in addition to well-documented clinic closures — could have been a factor in higher suicide rates for Blacks, mental health advocates say.

Six city-run mental health clinics closed under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2011 and remain closed, despite promises to reopen them from former Mayor Lori Lightfoot. One more shuttered, leaving five clinics throughout the city.

Mayor Brandon Johnson campaigned on a platform that included a “treatment, not trauma” initiative, which his office says focuses on reopening the mental health clinics. The ordinance is working its way through the Chicago City Council, said Cassio Mendoza, Johnson’s deputy press secretary.

The city’s mental health plans include some key offerings.

The mayor’s office points residents to a network of publicly ran and funded health centers — not city-run, though the city sometimes contributes funding and grants — as places where residents can get mental health care.

Another major initiative, the city’s CARE program, pairs mental health professionals with 911 call centers in select areas to curb police response to mental health crises.

In addition, the city also offers mental health programs in 23 Chicago Public Schools and added some in Chicago Public Libraries in 2023.

The Chicago Department of Public Health says that it was able to provide help to 73,899 people in 2022, up from 3,651 in 2019.

But some groups whose suicide rates have not dropped to pre-pandemic levels are falling through the cracks and might not know where to get services or have services in their area, Sagnia says.

Sagnia and her sisters are planning to start a mental health program for Gage Park residents and are hoping to secure public funding.

“I think it’s a community [effort] and a responsibility of the government to provide the money so that the communities actually have resources within that community where they don’t have to go to other communities,” Sagnia says.

Disparity in mental health message

Suicide is an issue that touches over half of all Americans, experts say. 

In 2021, 3.5 million U.S. adults made plans to end their lives by suicide, and 12 million had thoughts of suicide, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

After a dip in rates in 2020, national suicide death rates returned nearly to their peak in 2021.

In Cook County, suicide rates for white residents are higher than any other racial group. Their rates plunged in 2020 before taking a turn back upward recently.

But Black residents have seen the largest increase in rates of deaths by suicide since 2019 — a 53.8% total increase with a 79% jump between 2019 and 2020 — and are the only racial or ethnic group documented that has seen no improvement from 2019 rates.

Angela Cummings, executive director of the Illinois chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, says more resources need to reach Black communities.

“So what I saw from that, that the white and Latino population did have a decrease, and that’s great,” she says. “But that means that it’s not translating. So whatever educational program we were doing, we need to make a greater effort to get it into Black communities.”

Cummings’ group has brought suicide prevention messages to Black churches on the South Side. 

“When you take populations that may already be marginalized in incredibly important ways — such as food insecurity, poverty, housing insecurity, systemic racism —  then you throw something else like a pandemic, then you see that they ... already have been close to a tipping point.”

The city’s suicide prevention message

A Sept. 8 media brief from the Chicago Department of Public Health mentions National Suicide Prevention Month once along with information on COVID-19 tests and vaccines. It points to the national 988 helpline.

The 988 helpline started last year. In April, 13.8% of Illinois calls went unanswered, according to an analysis by the nonprofit KFF. Calls can be transferred to other states, which makes the process of locating services for those in crisis difficult, Axios reported.

Reaching out for help from these sources could lead to frustration.

Callers to one of the city-run mental health clinics, which accept patients regardless of insurance status or ability to pay, are transferred to a central intake line.

There can be a wait time. Once answered, callers will try to be matched with a clinic and a therapist, hopefully near them, and see them about once a week. The clinics have limited hours and are open two days a week.

Three of the clinics, as of mid-September, had a waiting list for services, and the Englewood clinic, one of two on the South Side and West Side, wasn’t accepting new patients. 

Mendoza, the mayor’s office’s deputy press secretary, told the Sun-Times, “No one directly works with suicide,” and he later emailed a statement about another ordinanceintroduced to the City Council aiming to give recommendations for expanding mental health resources.

The city has “launched various campaigns,” to raise awareness, Mendoza said. He cites the city’s “Unspoken” website as a way residents can learn about resources and says the city will “look for other innovative ways to promote and connect more people to lifesaving services.”

Only 15 of Chicago’s 77 community areas are served by CARE mental health teams.

A 2022 city report on the program acknowledges improvements need to be made to inform residents about the program’s existence.

In recent years, West Garfield Park has experienced high rates of deaths by suicide. A city-run mental health clinic, which could serve residents for free or on a sliding scale, is 3 miles away.

The CARE program serves the area — but only through an opioid overdose team. No mental health CARE program is available to those residents.

Northwest Side areas, including Norwood Park, Dunning and Montclare, also have some of the highest suicide rates in the city but no nearby access to the city’s center or CARE program.

Mount Greenwood on the Far Southwest Side, which had the highest rate of deaths by suicide in the city between 2017 and 2021 — 26.6 per 100,000 residents — is not covered under the CARE program, and is about 8 miles from the nearest city-run clinic. A suicide by a police officer rocked the neighborhood in 2021, the second police suicide that week.

The next week, the police department announced the hiring of a mental health adviser to address mental health issues among police officers.

Turning pain into purpose

Rafiah Maxie-Cole, 48, was inspired to start her own organizations after her son, Jamal Clay, died by suicide on May 27, 2020, two days after George Floyd’s death. On Saturday, he would’ve been 23. 

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

In his light green bedroom, she holds her son’s eighth grade graduation photo and tears up.

Twenty-four pairs of shoes are displayed neatly on shelves. A pair of bright red dress shoes were a favorite of Jamal’s. Others are part of Maxie-Cole’s organization to honor the souls of those who died by suicide or trauma, support those who are grieving and spread a suicide prevention message. 

Soul Survivors of Chicago provides financial support to those struggling with trauma through donations, as well as mental health education aimed specifically to Black, Indigenous and People of Color communities.

Maxie-Cole hears stories about wait times, appointments scheduled weeks away and a large caseload at the city-run mental health centers. She says the city isn’t doing enough for those that want and need help.

“We find ourselves at the back end of those initiatives that are happening in the front end. So yeah, the resources come slowly and trickle down like little raindrops.”

For his birthday Saturday, Jamal’s friends will come by her Olympia Fields home to spend time with her and honor his memory.

“Black males are fighting for the ability to have a voice, to have the resources and to be represented,” she says. “Every day I go online and see the fatalities, and it’s no joke. It is my dying wish that we continue to have these conversations about the importance of suicide prevention and awareness.”