Tag: suicide

A study demonstrates a 7% reduction in suicide attempts for teens in states that had legalized same-sex marriage.

From MinnPost: Laws legalizing same-sex marriage are associated with a significant drop in teen suicide attempts. In states that legalized same-sex marriage before June 2015, when...

The Place of Calm’s innovative Peer Support Approach means suicidal people can stay up to 24 hours in a safe place in the community and receive practical and emotional support from trained professionals who have their own lived experience of mental health challenges. Evidence suggests that it saves lives and is cost effective. Yet its funding is now due to be cut.

A new study shows that airline pilots are at elevated risk for depression, yet encounter barriers to accessing mental health services.

Only two hours after we got home, Dan fearlessly told me of the suicide plan that he'd devised while in the hospital. He had all that time to think about it while nobody was listening. He'd lost his dignity, his identity and his place in society. He had lost the will to live.

Although the drug industry, our drug regulators and leading psychiatrists have done what they could to obscure these facts, it can no longer be doubted that antidepressants are dangerous and can cause suicide and homicide at any age.

The Washington Post investigates the epidemic of suicide and the overuse of psychiatric drugs that is sweeping through towns in Colorado.

Although there is a great deal of evidence and many case reports detailing the neuroleptic & antidepressant link to suicide and violence, there has not been a definitive large-scale study by American psychiatry of the link between psychiatric drugs and the murder/suicides that are occurring with increased frequency. And the great question is: why not?

Patients are at an increased risk for suicide during the three months immediately following discharge from an inpatient psychiatric hospital.

Dr. Yolande Lucire, a psychiatrist from Australia, recently published a paper about the iatrogenic effects of psychiatric drugs.

A new study, published in Social Indicators Research, investigates the association between economic policy uncertainty and suicide rates in the US.

The objective of [these] bills is to combat suicide deaths by ensuring that accurate information is available on the relationship between suicides and prescription "medication". At the present time, 20 US veterans a day are dying by suicide.

A recent review found that hypnotic medications are associated with risks of suicide and suicidal ideation.

I have sometimes stopped en route to work, unsure how much longer I can continue. There is a sense of betrayal to my father and grandmother by working in a profession that failed them and is the only medical specialty to have its own survivor movement, not from the illnesses it hopes to treat, but from the ministrations of the profession itself.

Suddenly I had an insight into why my dad decided to end his life in 1976. I learned that, like me, he was on antidepressant medication. It seems highly likely that his illness could have been entirely caused by side effects of medication, just like it was with me.

"According to its website, AFSP is the ‘leading national not-for-profit organization dedicated to understanding and preventing suicide.’ Yet due to its Pharma relationships and continued...

There is an ever-narrowing bandwidth of behavior that supports the dominant narrative in our culture today. We all need to act a certain way to protect the foundational beliefs of our time – that “science” has it all figured out, that rules keep us safe, and that it’s us vs. them (insert germs, terrorists, pests, and other “enemies”). But what are the consequences of this? What is this sadness and where does it go if we bandage our consciousness with business, medication, substances, or general avoidance of our real human experience?

The media is now reporting details about the 18-year-old who shot and killed nine and wounded many others before killing himself on July 22 in Munich. My clinical and forensic experience leads to a distinction among people who murder under the influence of psychiatric drugs. Those who kill only one or two people, or close family members, often have little or no history of mental disturbance and violent tendencies. The drug itself seems like the sole cause of the violent outburst. On the other hand, most of those who commit mass violence while taking psychiatric drugs often have a long history of mental disturbance and sometimes violence. For these people, the mental health system seems to have provoked increasing violence without recognizing the danger.

“In a bid to raise awareness towards the global epidemic of abuse on Benzodiazepine or ‘benzos’ abuse, a global campaign dubbed as World Benzo Awareness...

Rational Suicide, Irrational Laws is an excellent book that explores the criminalization and decriminalization of suicide. It analyzes laws by which “mental health” professionals and organizations are held accountable or “liable.” It exposes horrific contradictions in how laws are applied, particularly problematizing the assumption that people who kill themselves are suffering from a “mental illness.” There is much in this book that makes me want to stand up and cheer.

The Roanoke Times medical column takes on the question, “Can antidepressants lead to suicidal thoughts and actions?” concluding that “it is crucial for patients...

Why, despite the fact that the vast majority of people diagnosed with a mental illness have suffered from some form of childhood trauma, is it still so difficult to talk about? Why, despite the enormous amount of research about the impact of trauma on the brain and subsequent effect on behaviour, does there seem to be such an extraordinary refusal for the implication of this research to change attitudes towards those who are mentally ill? Why, when our program and others like it have shown people can heal from the effects of trauma, are so many people left with the self-blame and the feeling they will never get better that my colleague writes about below?

The FDA has received reports of over 544 suicides and 1,869 attempted suicides connected to the smoking cessation drug Chantix, according to a new...

The meaning of veterans’ reactions to war is quite simple; they are trying to find a way to integrate the incredible horrors they’ve witnessed and to find a way to come back into a society that cannot possibly fully understand them. Drugging them into a stupor is not the answer. Congressman David Jolly (FL-13) has recently introduced the Veteran Suicide Prevention Act (H.R. 4640). The bill calls for the VA to study veteran suicides over the past five years and to determine what extent psychiatric drugs are implicated in those suicides. I encourage everyone to support Mr. Jolly’s bill by writing or calling your congressional representatives and encouraging them to cosponsor the bill.

Last year, eleven years after the suicide of Dan Markingson in a University of Minnesota drug study, external investigations found evidence of coerced study recruitment, troubling conflicts of interest, shoddy scientific review, deep mistrust of U leaders, and a climate of fear and intimidation in the Psychiatry Department. U leaders solemnly promised the people of Minnesota that they were finally going to clean up the mess. Last week, yet another investigation found that nothing has changed.