Tag: suicidal ideation

Inside My Suicidal Mind

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I need somebody who will push through that thick cotton wool ball with me until that moment when we can toss it away altogether. Someone who really tries to look at this world through the lens of my life, not theirs.

How “Safe Messaging” Gaslights Suicidal People

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Suicide prevention constructs a reality in which the problems of suicide lie within suicidal people. Sanity is constructed around wanting to live, insanity around wanting to die. Within this paradigm, the suicidal person can never be trusted. They are fragile, vulnerable, demanding protection, surveillance, and management.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy Reduces Self-Harm and Suicide Attempts

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A new meta-analysis finds that DBT reduces self-harm, suicide attempts, and reduces the frequency of psychiatric crisis service utilization.

Meta-Analysis Finds Asking About Suicidal Thoughts Does Not Predict Suicide

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A recent meta-analysis finds that the association between reported suicidal ideation and later suicide is low.

Increased Suicidality in Cymbalta Trial for Fibromyalgia in Teens

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A new as-yet-unpublished trial of duloxetine (Cymbalta) for fibromyalgia has presented more evidence of suicidal events in teens.

Prazosin Ineffective for Preventing Suicidal Thoughts — May Worsen Nightmares

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A new study found that prazosin was associated with increased insomnia and nightmares, and did not reduce suicidal thoughts.

Suicidal Tendencies, Part III: So, When Do I Get to Call...

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What if the key to saving someone is to admit you are powerless to save anyone at all? What would that beckon us to change? A few years ago, I spent a substantial amount of time talking with a man who entered my life because someone in the mental health system told him I might be the one who could save him (or at least, that’s how he heard it). His name was David.

Traditional South African Healers Use Connection in Suicide Prevention

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

When Facebook Sent the Cops to My Shelter

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Somehow, something I had said in this “secret” Facebook group had been made known. And now, at almost midnight, a cop was banging at the door of the lady who had been keeping me safe in a secret place. How did a “secret” Facebook conversation bring the cops to an address I didn’t have to perform a suicide prevention “welfare check”? Here’s what their “safe” meant to my safety.

Suicidal Tendencies, Part II: The Real ‘Stigma’ of Suicide

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The true ‘stigma’ happens when someone is unable to confess the magnitude of their pain without facing the consequence of involuntary incarceration (aka hospitalization) — when someone wants to die because of how powerless and trapped they feel in this world, and the system’s response is to hastily grab their last remaining drops of power away.

Humans are the Only Animals who Crave Oblivion Through Suicide

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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...

The MD and the Imaginary Eating Disorder

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He could have asked me if there was a specific event that had precipitated my suicide attempt. He could have asked if I had a history of trauma. He could have simply asked, “What happened?” “What are you feeling?” or “So what’s going on?” Nope. He chose to open our meeting with an accusatory remark about a make-believe eating disorder.

Our Day in Mental Health Court

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For weeks I had been trying to get released from the psychiatric ward, and none of my arguments, compliance, or attempted air of normality had made an impression on the barely-visible ward psychiatrist. I had, I was told, made a very serious suicide attempt and this was a predictor of future attempts. They would let me know when they thought I was sufficiently remorseful and stabilized to be released.

Simple Things

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Sometimes it's the simple things that keep us going, especially when the complicated ones seem so overwhelming; when there's too much chaos, too many emotions, too many possibilities and impending disasters. No one can give you a reason to live. You have to find it for yourself. Until you do, try simple things. For me, it was a turtle.

Psychiatry’s Thalidomide Moment

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The authors of Study 329 began recruiting adolescents for a comparative study of Paxil, imipramine and placebo in 1994 and finished their investigations in 1997. They dropped a large number of their original cohort, so the randomness element in the study must be open to question. Late in 1998, SmithKline Beecham, the marketers of Paxil, acknowledged in an internal document that the study had shown that Paxil didn’t work for adolescents in terms of the two primary and six secondary outcomes they had established at the start of the study. In a nutshell, Study 329 was negative for efficacy and positive for harm, contrary to their succinct upbeat conclusion.