Mental health activist for California tribes dies in murder-suicide

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A member of the Yurok tribe who advocated for better mental health treatment and suicide intervention in rural Northern California has died in an apparent murder-suicide.

Celinda Gonzalez was 59 years old.

In 2020, CalMatters wrote about his I work in Humboldt County where approximately 2 and a half times More residents die by suicide per capita than the rest of the state.

This was announced by the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office They found two bodies at a house in the village of Weitchpec, on the Yurok reservation, on February 3.

“Based on the preliminary investigation, the incident appears to be consistent with a murder-suicide,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.

The Sheriff’s Office declined to release details about the nature of the crime scene or the identities of the people found.

The Yurok tribe confirmed Gonzalez’s identity on a monument.

“She was a dear friend to many Tribal Council members, staff and community members,” the tribe states in the memorial. “This is a huge tragedy for the tribe.”

Gonzalez once had a grant-funded role as a suicide intervention specialist, working with local police and fire departments to identify potential signs of intent to self-harm.

In 2019, federal funds supporting his position ran out, so he struck out on his own.

Gonzalez lost his son Paul to suicide when he was 19 years old. His 43-year-old brother, Gaylord Lewis Jr., killed himself five years later in 2014.

As the pandemic swept across California and levels of anxiety and suicidal ideation spiked, Gonzalez was motivated by her own losses to help in Humboldt County, where access to mental health services is already difficult, compounded by a shortage of psychiatrists willing to relocate to rural California.

A grand jury investigation of Humboldt County in 2016 found that the county’s behavioral health board was not adequately serving county residents.

Gonzalez believed that despite the challenges of the pandemic, his community was resilient.

“They’ve been through wars, floods, fires and landslides,” he told a CalMatters reporter in 2020.

The Yurok Tribe offers grief and bereavement support at the village clinic.