Suicide

Patient advocates and bioethicists have launched a call-in campaign demanding action on psychiatric research abuse at the University of Minnesota.

The body of 78 year-old Bob Farthing, who had been missing since Wednesday, was found in the back seat of his car Friday evening.  "He...

We encourage young people to see themselves as fragile creatures whose brains can go haywire for any reason, or no reason at all. Then we tell them they have the “disease” of depression and ply them with drugs with a known link to worsening depression and suicidality going back for decades. How many more will have to die before this changes?

Study finds that traditional healers in South Africa, whose services are widely used by the country’s population, perform important suicide prevention work.

MIA blogger and mental health advocate Leah Harris discusses growing up with parents diagnosed with schizophrenia, her personal experience with the psychiatric system, and psychiatric drugs.

Multiple media sources are reporting on new data from the CDC revealing a substantial increase in the suicide rate in the United States between 1999...

In this piece for Aeon, Nicholas Humphrey explores why humans are the only animals that experience suicidality as well as the impact of suicide on evolution. "From the viewpoint...

Researcher Zel Dolinsky once taught at medical school and worked as a medical writer in the pharmaceutical industry. In his last emails, he told of how the adverse effects of psychiatric drugs led him to choose to end his life.

From The New York Times: The recent Florida school shooting has led to widespread conversations about links between gun violence and mental health issues. Journalists...

Finally, faced with the twenty known and two possible suicides on Paxil during clinical trials, Dr. Kraus reluctantly conceded that 80% of the victims were over thirty. Whatever they had told the FDA, the risks of Paxil could not be confined to adolescents — and GSK knew it.

I was fifteen. My birthday had come and gone and, as always, no one had noticed but me. I was fifteen, and I had been in Bellevue and Rockland State Hospital for more than half my life. I knew that I would be there until I died, becoming one of the crazy patients in Building 58, hanging from the bars of the porches — raving, screaming, making noises like animals in the zoo.

From Medium: Often after the suicide of a public figure, there is an increase in articles published attempting to destigmatize depression by categorizing it as...

In this video for Worldview Stanford, clinical psychologist Mark L. Hatzenbuehler discusses the adverse physical and mental health outcomes that often result from structural stigma.

In this five-part series for the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition, Nicole L. critiques a recent article by Dr. Greg Smith that was highly laudatory of benzodiazepines. Click...

From TIME: According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, the suicide rate among teen girls reached a 40-year high in 2015. From 2007...

The Danish Agency for Patients' Rights is holding a psychiatrist responsible for a patient's suicide, which came 11 days after an 8-minute consultation that...

Martha Rosenberg calls the reanalysis of Paxil and Study 329 “a victory for safety activists, medical reporters, the public and freedom of the press.” But, she warns, “many pro-pill doctors continue to fight evidence of Paxil’s suicide risks and similar SSRIs.”

Large numbers of studies are being conducted with many claiming internet use causes structural changes in the brain similar to those found in the brains of drug addicts. No snorting, smoking or injecting required. You just have to look at this drug for long enough and your brain is damaged. Is it possible your laptop and mobile phone are the crack cocaine of gadgets?

The crash last week of the Germanwings plane has shocked many. In view of the apparent mental health record of the co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, questions have been asked about the screening policies of airlines. The focus has generally been on the conditions pilots may have or the arguments they might be having with partners or other situational factors that might make them unstable. Even when the issue of the medication a pilot may be taking is raised, it is in the context of policies that permit pilots to continue on drugs like antidepressants to ensure any underlying conditions are effectively treated. But fewer treatments in medicine are effective in this sense than people might think and even when effective they come with effects that need to be balanced against the likely effects of the underlying condition.

For a scathing, 11-minute overview of the death of Dan Markingson at the University of Minnesota, and new allegations of coercion into psychiatric clinical trials, you can't do much better than this excellent investigative report by Jeff Baillon.

The case of “Beth” depicts, almost innocently, the trials and tribulations of a well-adjusted, talented 15-year-old who developed depression, paranoia, panic attacks, and self-injurious and homicidal behavior, and “bipolar disorder” after being prescribed antidepressants, and then antipsychotics. After Beth decided - on her own - to discontinue psychotropic medications in favor of hormone therapy, she remained free of psychiatric symptoms.

From Forbes: Facebook is now using algorithms to monitor users' online activity for warning signs of suicidal ideation or self-harm. Article →­

Jeffrey Lieberman, past-president of the American Psychiatric Association, authored an Op-Ed in last Friday’s New York Times, calling for improved mental health screenings in schools and emergency rooms in the wake of the murder of Virginia journalists Alison Park and Adam Ward. In support of forced treatment mechanisms, Lieberman claims: “Almost every mentally ill perpetrator of mass violence had been symptomatic and untreated for lengthy periods of time before their crime, because they (or their families) did not seek treatment or they refused it.”

Men who report being self-reliant may be at greater risk of suicidal thinking.

“Service members suffering from PTSD often feel like they’re wearing a mask,” Samantha Allen writes in Invisible Wounds. Melissa Walker, an art therapist, asks them to make one. “The results are stirring. One mask, striped in red and black with hollow chrome-colored eyes, is wrapped in razor wire with a lock where its mouth should be.”