Let’s say you’re scrolling through your Twitter feed. You see a tweet that makes it seem like that person intends to imminently act on suicidal thoughts. What do you do? Unfortunately, there isn’t really a good answer. I’ve been on the reporting side on one occasion. Someone had posted on their blog, which was shared […]
Suicidal Posts on Social Media: What Should Platforms Do? Read More »
A blogger I knew died by suicide yesterday. She scheduled a blog post and a Twitter share of the post to go live after the fact. One of the things mentioned in her post was that her plan was to be struck by a train. Today I was looking at the Twitter comments in response
Guilt Is Not a Suicide Prevention Strategy Read More »
Do antidepressants increase the risk of suicide? There are certainly people out there who are very vocal in insisting that they do. However, as is so often the case, the loudmouths don’t tend to be especially well informed. The FDA black box warning Since 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has required a
Antidepressants, Suicide Risk, and the FDA Black Box Warning Read More »
Just to get things started, I’ll say that I’m “mentally ill”, I “suffer from” depression, and I’m a little bit “crazy”, although the degree varies over time. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, there are a lot of people who like to take a stand against terminology that is thought to stigmatize
“Rules” for Talking About Our Mental Illnesses Read More »
Today is World Mental Health Day (the 27th annual), and this year’s focus is on mental health promotion and suicide prevention. Suicide awareness is a big part of this. The message from the president of the World Federation for Mental Health, which organizes World Mental Health Day, states: “The object of making suicide prevention the
Suicide Awareness Isn’t Enough for Prevention Read More »
This post about public views on suicide was inspired by a conversation I’ve been having with Dear Walden about research on suicide. In 2013, a group of Australian researchers developed and validated a scale to evaluate public views on suicide, which they named the Stigma of Suicide Scale. For each item on the scale, participants would
Suicide Stigma: What the Research Says About Public Views Read More »
Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. There are many ways to approach the concept of suicide prevention. One of those ways is to decrease the stigma related to suicidality, because stigma tends to promote silence, and silence is definitely not a good thing when it comes to suicidality. One stigmatized belief that I see frequently expressed
No, Suicide Is Not Selfish Read More »
Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me by journalist Anna Mehler Paperny is both a story of her own experiences of suicidality and an in-depth journalistic exploration of depression and suicide. The author has done her research well. The book contains information gleaned from interviews with quite a number of experts in fields relating
Book Review: Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me Read More »
In Jesse Bering’s book Suicidal: Why We Kill Ourselves, he explores the mental processes going on in the minds of people who are suicidal. One of these processes is cognitive deconstruction, which I hadn’t heard of before. It sounded very familiar, however, in the sense that it’s something that I have experienced when I’ve attempted
Suicidality and Cognitive Deconstruction Read More »
First off, before we talk about surviving attempted suicide, we’ll establish a couple of things: If you’re having thoughts of suicide and need to reach out, there’s a list of crisis resources here. No need to worry about me; I’m not currently suicidal. Regretting attempts I recently saw a post by Elizabeth of Life. Love.
No Regrets? Surviving Attempted Suicide Read More »
