A 35-year-old man does a ‘suicide by cop’ in Trout Creek on Friday.
A 40-year-old man kills himself in Lewistown after an hours-long standoff on Saturday.
An 18-year-old man stabbed his roommate over 20 times in Bozeman on Sunday, saying the man was a source of “negative energy” and that by stabbing him, he’d “have a better future.”
And then we have Sally Smith.
She didn’t mess around.
Took a ton of pills and kept the car running in the garage. She desperately wanted out of this world.
Left her husband to care for their four kids. We don’t know about the families of the two men that died this week, or what the story is with that 18-year-old.
These are heartbreaking stories...mostly because they never had to happen.
What do they all have in common?
Covid. The lockdowns. The job losses. The extra childcare. The stress.
It’s so much easier to use a gun to end it all, to find a way out.
4 new victims of the covid pandemic, ones that will never be recorded in the state’s official death rolls for the virus.
But we know better. We know what killed them.
The problems are rampant across society. The state just gave UM $1 million to help prevent child abuse and neglect.
“Officials say families are struggling to get services, and Montana is seeing an alarming rise in children going into foster care because of abuse and neglect.”
One of the biggest contributors to the increase in child abuse and neglect are the job losses that parents are experiencing, at the same time the schools force the kids to stay home 5 days a week.
We’ve had so many job losses here in Missoula, coupled with so many transplants moving in, that common workers can no longer find a place to live.
This was the big reason the city council gave the new Johnson Street warming shelter an extra $450,000 last night, most of which is federal money. Over 100 people are now living at the shelter.
In Great Falls they’re opening a new crisis childcare shelter, designed for parents that are at their wit’s ends.
“A crisis nursery is a licensed facility providing short term, non-medical residential care and supervision for children under six years of age, voluntarily brought by a parent of legal guardian due to a family crisis or stressful situation for no-cost childcare.”
Stressful situation...like having the kids home 5 days a week for the past 4 months, and at home all day everyday for 5 months before that?
There’s an easy fix for that - open the schools. Something that will help even more is getting rid of restrictions on businesses so people can begin working again, begin taking care of themselves.
But we all know that won’t happen anytime soon. Giving the old people a few more years is what we’ll do, even if this creates decades of misery for the young.
Makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?
This trend of people losing their minds is going to continue for months. People are going to get more depressed, they’ll get divorced, beat their kids, and in many cases, kill themselves if not the people around them as well.
It’s happening already. It’s been happening for months.