Tag: suicidality

Shedding the Limits of “Severe Mental Illness” Labels

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When people seeking help are relegated to “the Other,” how can they ever form a “therapeutic alliance”? Without collaboration, treatment devolves into coercion and oppression. We must change our language and relationships so new narratives can be born.

Healing From Transgenerational Trauma: My Mum, My Daughter, & Me

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Emotional trauma is the type of wound that, if not processed and integrated, can become a void that expands to swallow not just the traumatized person but also their children and grandchildren.

Q&A: My Child Is Suicidal. What Should I Do?

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My child talks about wanting to die. She is only 9 years old. There is so much information out there about what family or friends should say to people who are suicidal, but I’m wondering if there is special advice for supporting a child or young person versus an adult.

Suicidality: When Your Feelings Are Too Dangerous

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After finding a cop at my door, I learned it wasn’t safe to talk about my feelings of wanting to die. As a result, I spent the better part of the next decade not telling anyone when I was suicidal.

Now I See a Person: A New Model for Breaking Free...

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NISAPI helps people achieve recovery by pairing the normalcy of a ranch and the nurturance of horses with a philosophy of postmodern collaborative practice.

Letters to My Doctors (Part 3)

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Rape is to Love what Bombs are to Peace and what Behavioral Eugenics are to Mental Health. So I choose noncompliance with psychiatric force.

Letters to My Doctors (Part 2)

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Why am I whole when I dance and paint but deathly ill when faced by a European/American medical mechanic? Why was I locked in a room for a week in the first place? Was it to heal? Or was it to fill a bed?

Not Just Another Stain on the Wall

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During my 96-hour hold in the psych unit—despite that I was rational and a danger to no one—I was made to feel ashamed and somehow unclean. I went home feeling more depressed than ever.

Out of the Abyss (with a Little Help from My Friends)

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An ER doctor told me I was experiencing venlafaxine withdrawal, then told me to go home and take care of myself. Unbeknownst to me, I was about to enter pure hell.

Trauma in a Place Where Peace Should Be

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It should have been safe and healing for me in the hospital. Instead, it was like being at home with my stepfather: I was abused and invisible, just trying to protect myself. 

Peer Behind the Mask of My Smile

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Inside the hospital, I was a social butterfly and knew practically everyone on my wing, but at home, I was a nobody and a loner. If only I had the energy to fake it one hundred percent of the time, then nobody would suspect a thing.

Anatomy of a Suicide: Stress and the Human Condition

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The Defense Cascade is a survival framework that evolutionary researchers are exploring as an explanation for extreme states that many people experience. It can help explain why chronic stress can make us feel like ending our life is the only reasonable way out.

Mental Health Services Turned My Daughter’s Crisis into a Way of...

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My world turned upside down when my daughter nearly died from a serious suicide attempt. After several years as her caretaker I began to wonder: What can we do to change the way our mental health services are organized so they won't turn a crisis into a way of life for already distressed and vulnerable people?

Q&A: My Child Is Self-Harming. How Can I Help?

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I walked in on my teenaged daughter cutting her upper leg with a razor. I have also noticed multiple cuts and what look like cigarette burns on her wrists and torso. She’s always made excuses about them, but now I realize she has been self-harming for a while. She swears she isn’t suicidal. What’s this all about, and what can I do?

Verne Troyer’s Passing: What’s Prejudice Got to Do With It?

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Again and again after an incident like this occurs, the media bombard the public with calls to bring about greater awareness of "mental illness" and the importance of "treatment" that is generally described in a narrow way. There is little discussion about why the person may have been suffering in the first place.

A Clashing of Worlds (and Perspectives) on the Problem of Suicide

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The controversy with 13RW is essentially a clashing of worlds — the world of entertainment (and its predominant audience of teens) and the world of science and practice. Who’s to say those from each perspective cannot find common ground in the service of something with life and death consequences?

“As Suicide Rates Rise, Researchers Separate Thoughts from Actions”

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“Suicide rates in the United States have been rising, especially among veterans and members of the armed forces. Traditional assumptions about why people kill themselves have not led to effective strategies for suicide prevention,” psychologist Craig Bryan tells Science News. “So in recent years, psychologists and others have been reconsidering basic beliefs about why people carry out the ultimate act of self-destruction.”

The Troubled Life of Study 329: Consequences of Failure to Retract

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If someone were to ask the surviving authors of Study 329 the question: “Knowing what you know now, if you had to do it over, would you agree to participate in that study again?”, many would probably say no. Study 329’s problems started to surface right after it was published. Several doctors wrote letters to the JAACAP Editor with probing questions, mostly centred on the psychiatric side effects of paroxetine, and the measures used to claim its efficacy in treating adolescents. The authors responded and the questioners did not pursue their concerns further. Except one. Next week, fourteen years and two months after it was published, it is about to take yet another hit, when the Restored version is published.