Suicide

Adolescent substance abuse is a major public health concern. It is associated with an increased incidence of various psychiatric disorders like depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and conduct disorders and the relationship between mental and behavioral disorders and the substance use problems seems to be bi-directional. Adolescent suicide and substance abuse have a number of risk factors in common. Prevention of suicide requires an individualized comprehensive assessment and management plan aimed at substance use and psychiatric disorders. This would involve a multidisciplinary collaboration and use of pharmacological, psychological and social interventions.

Suicides among marginalised groups are one of the few occasions in which self-harm and suicide are framed as having cultural, social, environmental, historical or structural causes. Suicidology, psychology and public discourse typically understand suicide causality to be grounded in individualised psychic pain and pathology, disavowing the social, cultural, environmental and linguistic contexts. However, public discourse on suicides of 'marginalised' groups such as asylum seekers, Indigenous people and queer/LGBT youth are 'authorised' to be discussed from social perspectives, informing opportunities to rethink suicidality, identity and liveability. Building on recent critical challenges to dominant theories, this article examines some of the ways the suicides of marginalised groups are described in social terms, demonstrating how cultural approaches to relationality, aspiration, performativity and mobility can expand current thinking on suicide cause and prevention.

SOURCE: Baril, A. (2020). « Queeriser le geste suicidaire : penser le suicide avec Nelly Arcan », dans I. Boisclair, P.-L. Landry et G.P. Girard (dirs.). QuébeQueer : Le queer dans les productions littéraires, artistiques et médiatiques québécoises, Montréal, Presses de l’Université de Montréal, p. 325-341.

Baril, Alexandre (2018). « Conférence d’honneur : “Vivre avec” la mort : développer une éthique de la reconnaissance et de la responsabilité envers les personnes suicidaires », The Poetics and Ethics of “Living With”: Indigenous, Canadian and Québécois Feminist Production Today/Les poétiques et éthiques du « vivre avec » : Productions féministes autochtones, canadiennes et québécoises de nos jours, Colloque organisé par le Canadian Literature Centre of the University of Alberta, Banff Centre, Banff, 13 octobre.

People abused by angry discipline as children, may tend to abuse or overly punish other people or themselves for perceived wrongs in their adult life. In some individuals, aggressive personality traits may be genetically inherited. The aggressive personality may feel weakened by having guidelines or boundaries for anger. Anger is a normal human emotion, and these guidelines can help express anger in a healthy way.

For some persons who are facing terminal illness, severe permanent disability, or extreme old age, suicide may seem to be a rational choice. Suicide prevention services, however, do not provide for suicide as a sane, honorable choice in such circumstances. This paper identifies 17 specific considerations a mental-health professional may use to help such a person explore whether suicide would be rational or irrational. These considerations are formulated without antecedent bias towards prevention and without interpreting interest in suicide as evidence of depression or mental illness. Dying, severely disabled, and aged persons considering suicide on what seem to them to be rational grounds may thus trust and consult mental-health professionals about their plans.

Although suicide was the 1 ith leading cause of death in the United States in zooo, the number of empirically validated treat-ments to reduce suicidality is small. Recent reviews indicate that the zo or so trials focused on reducing suicidali-ty per se have been limited with regard to ...

During the period February 2009-February 2012, the Office of Refugee Resettlement of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported 16 suicides among the approximately 57,000 Bhutanese refugees who had resettled in the United States since 2008. In 2012, the office requested assistance from CDC and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health's Refugee Health Technical Assistance Center to identify risk factors that might be associated with suicidal ideation among Bhutanese refugees. In collaboration with the Massachusetts refugee health center, CDC conducted a survey of randomly selected Bhutanese refugees in four U.S. states with large populations of resettled refugees. The results indicated significant associations between ever having expressed suicidal ideation and current self-reported symptoms of mental health disorder (e.g., anxiety, depression, or posttraumatic stress disorder) and postmigration difficulties (e.g., family conflict or inability to find work). T...

Reducing youth suicide in the United States (U.S.) is a national public health priority, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning (LGBTQ) youth are at elevated risk. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) endorses six evidence-based (EB) strategies that center on meeting the needs of LGBTQ youth in schools; however, fewer than 6 % of U.S. schools implement all of them. The proposed intervention model, "RLAS" (Implementing School Nursing Strategies to Reduce LGBTQ Adolescent Suicide), builds on the Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, and Sustainment (EPIS) conceptual framework and the Dynamic Adaptation Process (DAP) to implement EB strategies in U.S. high schools. The DAP accounts for the multilevel context of school settings and uses Implementation Resource Teams (IRTs) to facilitate appropriate expertise, advise on acceptable adaptations, and provide data feedback to make schools implementation ready and prepared to sustain ch...

Understanding global variation in firearm mortality rates could guide prevention policies and interventions. To estimate mortality due to firearm injury deaths from 1990 to 2016 in 195 countries and territories. This study used deidentified aggregated data including 13 812 location-years of vital registration data to generate estimates of levels and rates of death by age-sex-year-location. The proportion of suicides in which a firearm was the lethal means was combined with an estimate of per capita gun ownership in a revised proxy measure used to evaluate the relationship between availability or access to firearms and firearm injury deaths. Firearm ownership and access. Cause-specific deaths by age, sex, location, and year. Worldwide, it was estimated that 251 000 (95% uncertainty interval [UI], 195 000-276 000) people died from firearm injuries in 2016, with 6 countries (Brazil, United States, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and Guatemala) accounting for 50.5% (95% UI, 42.2%-54.8%) of...

Perinatal care in Japan has progressed rapidly in recent decades, remarkably reducing maternal, perinatal and neonatal mortality rates. This is attributable not only to the sustained efforts and dedication of past obstetricians and midwives, but also to the collective results achieved by the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology and healthcare administration, including research on advanced medical care, education, medical care improvements and establishing perinatal care centers. Although the maternal mortality rate was in steady decline until 2007 (3.1/100 000 births), it repeatedly fluctuated thereafter, plateauing at 3.4 per 100 000 births in 2013 and 2.7 per 100 000 births in 2014. Thus, the Perinatology Committee has analyzed the current situation of maternal deaths and has proposed countermeasures to reduce such death. The items deliberated upon by related subcommittees in 2015 are presented herein. The addition of indications for 'fibrinogen concentrate', 'ep...

The current study examined racial/ethnic differences in utilization of mental health services in a nationally representative sample of suicidal adults. Data were extracted from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) from 2009 to 2016. Participants consisted of adults with severe suicidal ideation and/or behavior in the past 12 months (unweighted n=17,338). Multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted to assess racial/ethnic differences in mental health treatment utilization after adjusting for health insurance status, family income, age, sex, and major depression. Analyses were conducted separately for suicidal ideators with no attempts (i. e., “pure” ideators; unweighted n=14,578) and for suicide attempters (unweighted n=2760) for psychiatric inpatient and outpatient care, respectively. Racial/ethnic disparities in mental health treatment utilization were less apparent for inpatient care and most evident for outpatient care. For inpatient care, no racial/ethnic differences were observed among suicidal ideators with no attempts. Among suicide attempters, only Hispanics were less likely than non-Hispanic whites to receive inpatient care. In contrast, for outpatient care, treatment use was lower for all racial ethnic minorities, except Native American and multiracial individuals, relative to non-Hispanic whites among suicidal ideators with no attempts. Outpatient service use was also lower for non-Hispanic blacks, Hispanics, and multiracial individuals relative to non-Hispanic whites among suicide attempters. This pattern of findings is consistent with the possibility that suicidal racial/ethnic minorities may delay use of mental health services until clinical severity becomes such that elevated clinical care (i.e., inpatient treatment) is required. Future research accounting for these disparities is warranted.

Iedere hulpverlener die werkt met jongeren kan geconfronteerd worden met een jongere die aan zelfmoord denkt, een zelfmoordmoordpoging ondernomen heeft of overlijdt door zelfdoding. Wat kan je als hulpverlener doen in deze situaties? Ben je verplicht om je beroepsgeheim te doorbreken? In dit artikel geven we tips voor het omgaan met suïcidale jongeren, staan we stil bij het spanningsveld tussen de hulpverleningsplicht en het beroepsgeheim en geven we enkele aanknopingspunten voor wanneer je geconfronteerd wordt met een cliënt die zelfmoord pleegt.

Suicide rates in prisons are high. Our aim was to investigate the contribution of imitative suicide to the prison suicide rate. We used Knox tests for space-time clustering in a case register of natural and self-inflicted deaths in prisons in England and Wales and model simulations to estimate the effect size. We found significant space-time clustering among 657 self-inflicted deaths in 90 prisons over 10 years but no space-time clustering among 430 deaths from natural causes in 87 prisons over this period. Model simulations with an imitation rate of 5.8% (CI 1%-11%) reproduced the observed space-time clustering.

Throughout his life and his work, Cajal realized the potential of the neurons he was so carefully studying and how, grouped in systems, they served the special senses and the maintenance and proper functioning of the organism. Over the past 25 years, major depression and suicide have come to be recognized as associated with alteration in serotonergic neurons and their target receptors. We examined whether prefrontal cortical (PFC) serotonin transporter sites (SERT) differ in major depression and suicide by quantitative receptor autoradiography. Clinical information was obtained by psychological autopsy. We found regionally distinct neurobiological correlates of major depression and suicide. A diffuse reduction of SERT binding throughout the dorsoventral extent of the PFC in major depression may reflect a widespread impairment of serotonergic function consistent with the range of psychopathology in major depression. The localized reduction in SERT binding in ventral PFC found in suic...

The gender related suicide and unemployment rates for 1964-1986 from twenty-three Western countries were reviewed. A statistically significant correlation was found for both genders for the 1974-1986 period, which saw major rises in both suicide and unemployment in many Western nations. This was in contrast to a non-significant correlation for 1964-1973. As unemployment reached a critical level the statistical link with suicide became stronger. This suggests that unemployment is a contributing factor in increased suicide. Major gender changes occurred, in particular rises in female suicide rates, though these were not uniform. Whilst the expected greater male/female ratio for suicide was confirmed, there were significant variations between countries, with the ratio widening particularly amongst anglo phone nations. This indicated differential gender changes in patterns of suicide. The possibility of some 'protective' mechanism against suicide for women in anglo phone countri...