Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “suicide”
September 10 has been designated as Suicide Prevention Day in the United States, and each year that day provides everyone a chance to stop and reflect. Suicide causes more deaths annually than violent crime, accidents, and smoking. In every age group, beginning from age 10, suicide is one of the major causes of death. We don’t seem to be doing …
10 USEFUL* things you can do for suicide prevention *Spoiler: none of these things are about “fixing” a suicidal person. I’d like to apologize for missing the actual National Suicide Prevention Day, which was September 10, but, really, any day is a good day to talk about suicide prevention. Suicide prevention is not a matter of telling your distressed friend …
Deaths of despair increasing, but only in the USA Mortality rates are rising in the United States, especially among poor, rural populations, and specifically among whites. Life expectancy in other groups continues its historic rise, and this rising pattern is also found in 16 other countries with comparable economic levels. This phenomenon has been dubbed “deaths of despair” because the …
Suicide remains a sad mystery in many ways. Those left behind can never really know what was in their loved one’s mind at the last. We blame ourselves, and we deal with all the guilt, anger and grief that the act leaves behind, but we can never completely understand what leads someone to take their own life. Willa Goodfellow, in …
After decades of increasing life expectancy, recent years have seen a higher death rate among some groups of Americans, attributed to increases in suicide and drug and alcohol abuse. The causes of these so-called “deaths of despair” are still debated, but may include job loss, economic downgrading, and lack of safety net programs, such as job retraining. A recent study …
2016 data now available from the Center for Disease Control show that suicide is now a leading cause of death for adults aged 25 – 44, at 16.9 deaths per 100,000, it exceeds the rate of death from heart disease in this age cohort. For those aged 15 – 24, suicide is now the second highest cause of death. It …
Internet addiction increases suicidality, according to a recent meta-analysis that looks at 25 published studies on the topic. Definitions of internet addiction, and other related disorders such as internet gaming disorder are still in flux, and the subject of much debate, but the broad outlines of a serious disorder are gradually being filled in. Several studies have documented links between …
Sometimes people feel that it is time to end it all because they have become too old without having achieved a dream, or because they are no longer attractive. It seems to me that these feelings may have been behind Ms Kate Spade’s recent death. Everyone faces disappointments. And as we age we have to deal with more of them. …
Suicide Survivor Day is the one day a year when people affected by suicide loss gather around the world at events in their local communities to find comfort and gain understanding as they share stories of healing and hope. Discover more about Survivor Day. UCSF and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention are hosting an important event for suicide survivors on November …
Imagine a world where a silent epidemic was cutting short the lives of young, otherwise healthy people. Imagine that, that deaths in this epidemic were rapidly increasing, while deaths from cancer, heart disease, HIV, and stroke were decreasing. Now imagine that there was no public outrage, not even any clear recognition in the media of what was happening. And imagine that …
I am away at the annual meeting of the Northern California Psychiatric Society this weekend and while taking a break from the presentations I wanted to try to come up with a quick post that might be relevant to this blog. Probably the most moving part of the weekend was last night’s presentation by Kevin Brigg, who for many years …
An article just published online in the prestigious journal JAMA Psychiatry makes us drawn case that our fascination with trying to come up with clear answers to questions that may ultimately be impossible to answer (what a person’s intent was when they injured themselves) is obscuring the fact that self-injury is now the eighth leading cause of death in this …
CBT for insomnia (CBTi) is clearly preferable to taking sleeping medications for most people. Studies show that cognitive behavioral therapy is associated with greater improvements in sleep quality than sleeping medications, and that those improvements are more durable, and, particularly in the elderly, sleeping medications are associated with significant adverse effects, including an increase in mortality. But it can be a hard …
We had the absolute pleasure of talking with director Kathy Leichter about her experience of making her movie, Here One Day. Here One Day is an intimate look into Kathy’s mother’s experience with Bipolar Disorder as well as her own experience, as her daughter. Question: How did you come up with the idea of Here One Day? Kathy Leichter: I’ve been …
Suicide: from the Latin “sui” – “of one s self,” “-cidium” – “a killing” – “suicidium.” “I cannot stand feeling this way anymore. Please let IT end.” Let the pain end. We embody the pain, therefore as the source of pain, we feel compelled to end ourselves in the desperate moments. But is it not the pain we want to …
I just attended the screening of a remarkable documentary at the Institute for Psychiatric Services meeting in San Francisco. The film is called Here One Day. It is an incredibly personal story by documentary film maker Kathy Leichter, about her mother, and her mother’s struggle with bipolar. The film is a tribute to a remarkable woman, who’s bipolar disorder both …
Suicide in young adults and adolescents is one of the most troubling issues facing any of us dealing with depression. This post, provided by Yellowbrick, speaks specifically to parents; however, we find that it is a useful resource for all of us who have adolescents and young adults in our lives. Of particular importance is point number 8; it can be …
Several of the readers of this blog sent me a link to an article that appeared in The New York Times this past week that indicated that it was possible or even likely that at the end of May the Golden Gate Bridge district would approve installing a barrier to prevent suicides. In case you don’t live near here, the …
One of our favorite readers sent us a link to an article entitled “The Irony of Suicide” that recently appeared in the New York Times. We liked the article and thought it might we worth reposting it here. Especially since, irony of ironies, this holiday season is for many people a time when thoughts of suicide can become very difficult …
Sometimes brains do terrible things. One of the worst of those things is the suicidal preoccupation that can, eventually, lead to suicide itself. Over the years I have done a lot of thinking about suicide and suicidal preoccupation. One aspect of thoughts of suicide is the data about what happens when someone tries to kill him or herself and is …
