Previously Hidden Data Shows Anti-flu Drug Linked to Psychosis and Suicides

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"(A)t least 70 people have died, many of them by suicide, after Tamiflu-induced episodes," reports Newsweek, in an article about the popular anti-flu drug...

“Clients and Suicide: The Lawyer’s Dilemma”

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If their clients admit to having suicidal feelings or show evidence of serious psychological problems, how do lawyers' legal responsibilities to their clients change...

Robin Williams On Antidepressant at Time of Suicide

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Robin Williams had "therapeutic" levels of the tetra-cyclic antidepressant mirtazapine in his blood at the time of his suicide, according to the coroner's report...

Farming with Pesticides Linked to Increased Suicidal Depression

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Exposure to pesticides is linked to significant increases in suicidal depression in farmers, according to a study by US National Institute of Health researchers...

Suicide Warnings on Antidepressants Debated in NEJM

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In the New England Journal of Medicine, Richard Friedman and Marc Stone present very different arguments about the reliability of the body of research...

40,000 Suicides Annually and America Still Shrugs

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In my last two posts, Back in the Dark House Again: The Recurrent Nature of Clinical Depression and Am I Having a Breakdown or Breakthrough? Further Reflections on a Depressive Relapse, I have shared my recent relapse into depression. Although it has been tough, when I wake up each morning I am grateful for one thing — I am not suicidal. Others are not as fortunate.

Samaritans’ Online Suicide Surveillance App an Ethical Minefield

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In Gigaom, privacy and security journalist David Meyer discusses the release of a new app from the UK Samaritans called "Radar." The app monitors...

Could Psychiatric Care Be Causing Suicides?

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What is the reason that people are 44.3 times more likely to commit suicide if they've visited a psychiatric hospital within the year? AlterNet...

Smoking Cessation and Psychiatric Drugs Cause the Most Suicidal and Homicidal Reactions

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The popular smoking cessation drug Chantix is the medication that most frequently makes people feel suicidal or homicidal, according to figures gathered by the...

Angry Caller to Help Line Tracked, Incarcerated in Psychiatric Hospital & Billed

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John Albers was completely surprised when police came to his home at midnight and insisted on taking him to a psychiatric hospital, where he...

Life & Death: Robin Williams, Suicide “Prevention,” and the World as We Know...

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I’ve been very, very sad lately. Some might even call me “depressed.” There are a lot of reasons. Robin Williams’ suicide is not one of them. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not happy about what has come of him. I have fond memories of Mork and Mindy, just like everyone else over the age of 30 or so. It is unquestionably sad to learn he was hurting so much, and even harder to reconcile that with his relentlessly upbeat public persona. On a personal level, it hurts at least a little to know that someone who experienced that level of success (about which most can only dream) also fell so far and experienced so much despair.

Suicide Prevention for All: Making the World a Safer Place to Be Human

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Like millions, I am sitting with the fact that one of the funniest people to grace the planet has died by his own hand. Robin Williams’ death has hit people of my generation, Generation X, especially hard. After all, his face flashed often across our childhood screens. Mork and Mindy episodes were a source of solace for me as a little girl, as I bounced around between foster homes and family members' homes, while my single mother cycled in and out of the state mental hospital, fighting to survive. I could laugh and say “nanu, nanu - shazbot” and "KO" and do the silly hand sign and forget for just a little while about living a life I didn’t ask for.

Suicide: A Permanent Solution to a Temporary Problem

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Many people who have never been severely depressed might ask, “Why would anybody want to kill themselves?” After all, taking one’s life goes directly against the survival instinct that nature has programmed us with. For example, if you were walking across the street and saw a car coming towards you − your first instinct would be to jump out of its path. Yet, when the brain becomes overwhelmed with chronic, intense pain that seems to have no end, then suicide becomes not only a rational choice, but a compelling option. After all, if you are faced with the prospect of being in eternal hell, then taking your own life seems like an act of self-love, not an act of self-detruction.

Former Duke Psychiatry Chair Calls for BMJ to Retract Article about Antidepressant Black Box...

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A former Duke University psychiatry chair is calling for a retraction of a study suggesting that the FDA's black-box warnings about increased suicidality in youth taking SSRIs led to increases in adolescent suicide attempts.

Here’s the Real Data: No Increase in Suicide Attempts Following Black Box Warning

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A British Medical Journal study led by Harvard Medical School's Christine Lu suggested that black box warnings about increased suicidality in youth who take antidepressants actually led to increases in adolescent suicide attempts. However, the latest in a stream of critics of that conclusion are the authors of one of the key studies cited by Lu in support of her team's analysis.

Smoking Restrictions Linked to Reduced Suicide Rates

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Smoking laws and cigarette taxes have strong links to suicide rates, according to psychiatrists from Washington University in St. Louis. Previous studies have presumed...

From Self Care to Collective Caring

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As a trauma survivor growing up in various adolescent mental health systems, I never learned any useful self-care tools or practices. I was taught that my current coping skills (self-injury, suicidal behavior, illicit drug use) were unacceptable, but not given any ideas as to what to replace them with. No one seemed to want to know much about the early childhood traumas that were driving these behaviors. Instead, I collected an assortment of diagnoses. I was told that I would be forever dependent on mediated relationships with professionals, and an ever-changing combination of pills. The message was that my troubles were chemical in nature and largely beyond my control.

A Daughter’s Call for Safety and Sanity in Mental Health

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My mother was once a bright, creative, beautiful young woman, a promising artist and a poet, who was captivated by the hippie movement. She was a creative bohemian artist, defying the conventions of our middle-class Jewish Midwestern family, which had carried a tradition of holding emotions inside and acting stoic. One day, soon after my grandparents’ divorce, she left. She hitched a ride to California, and from that point on, was never the same. The police picked her up on a park bench in Arizona, and she was committed for the first time at age 18. She rotated in and out of mental hospitals, the streets, and jail until her death.

High Doses of Antidepressants Increase Self-Harm in Children, Young Adults

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A comprehensive meta-analysis of randomized trial data by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health finds that children and young adults who start...

Defeating Goliath: Mental Health is a Social Justice Issue, and People with Lived Experience...

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While I have lived just a few miles away from the Capitol for the last fifteen years, I have been unsure about getting involved in legislative advocacy. I’ve been intimidated by the complexity of the legislative process, and more inclined to leave it up to others who I perceive as having more experience than me. And honestly, I haven’t felt very hopeful about effecting change. My cynicism had turned to “learned helplessness.” And then along came a mental health bill so destructive, so regressive, that I had to step out of my uncomfortable comfort zone.

Markingson Case Supporters: Please Join Our Call-In Campaign

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

It’s About the Trauma: How to Truly Address the Roots of Violence and Suffering...

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Representative Tim Murphy is a psychologist who proposes unsatisfactory solutions to our most pressing social problems. In a "shockingly regressive" piece of legislation known as the “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2013” (H.R. 3717), he proposes to expand the highly controversial practice of Involuntary Outpatient Committment (IOC) for persons with serious mental illnesses. But that approach is not the answer, as documented in a fact sheet authored by the National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery:

First They Ignore You: Impressions From Today’s Hearing on H.R. 3717

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As I walked alone up the stairs to the Rayburn House Office Building this morning to attend the hearing of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health on H.R. 3717 - the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act - I thought about how I wasn’t truly alone. In spirit with me were all the people who had experienced scary, coercive, and dehumanizing interventions in the name of help. In spirit with me was every mental health provider who went into the field hoping to really make a difference in their communities, but became cynical and discouraged in the face of so many broken systems and broken spirits.

Open Letter to Senator Creigh Deeds

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Dear Senator Deeds: Hello from another fellow Virginian. First, I want to extend my deepest condolences for the horrific tragedy that befell your family last year, and for the loss of your precious son Gus. I think I know, at least in part, how agonizing it is when our loved ones cannot access helpful supports, and how it feels to watch in horror as they spiral downward into darkness and despair. We all agree that our mental health systems are broken. Those of us who have been down the hellish road of struggling with our mental health and have found recovery have developed a new vision that will take us forwards, not backwards. Please give us the opportunity to share that new vision with you.

Katharine Hepburn is Glamorous – Suicide is Not

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What do you do when the media reports stories of children who have killed themselves on SSRIs? Position the stories of these children, not the drugs they were taking, as a suicide risk. Warn that more children will die if mouthy parents are allowed to speak and upstart journalists are allowed to report. And then position psychiatrists as the only people who can talk about suicide without producing an epidemic of self inflicted deaths.