A Cross‐National Comparison of Suicide Attempts,Drug Use,and Depressed Mood Among Dominican Youth

We compared suicide attempts, depressed mood, and drug use of 1,710 Dominican public high school students in New York City (NYC) and 9,573 in the Dominican Republic (DR) in 2009. Compared to DR Dominicans, NYC Dominicans were more likely to have reported lifetime marijuana use (27.6% vs. 1.5%), lifetime inhalant use (11.0% vs. 7.6%), lifetime other drug use (9.9% vs. 3.0%), depressed mood (31.3% vs. 27.2%), and suicide attempt (13.8% vs. 8.8%). The results of this study supported the hypothesis that substantial increases in illicit drug use, especially cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, and methamphetamines, among NYC Dominican youth account for their increased risk for suicide attempts compared to their DR Dominican counterparts. It also identified suicide attempts as a public health problem among NYC Dominicans, the largest NYC Latino immigrant population.     

Soluble interleukin 2 receptor levels, temperament and character in formerly depressed suicide attempters compared with normal controls

An imbalance of the immune system and mixed personality profiles in suicide attempters have been reported. As suicidal behavior is common in patients with psychiatric disorders within the spectrum of depressive features, in this study we measured soluble interleukin-2 receptor concentrations in plasma (sIL-2R) and investigated temperament and character profile and their potential correlation in formerly depressed patients with a history of suicide attempt. We studied sIL-2R levels in plasma and personality characteristics (using Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory [TCI]) of formerly depressed patients who had attempted suicide a mean of 3 years previously (n = 25), and age and gender matched normal controls (n = 25). There was no significant difference in sIL-2R levels between formerly depressed suicide attempters and age and gender matched normal controls (0.23 ng/ml +/- 0.25 vs. 0.19 ng/ml +/- 0.16). When compared to normal controls, suicide attempt patients had a significantly higher score on the temperament dimension "harm avoidance" and a lower score on the character dimension "self-directedness." No significant correlation was found between sIL-2R values and TCI dimensions. We propose that the liability to suicidal behavior among suicide attempters susceptible to depressive symptomatology may be related to high harm avoidance and low self-directedness.     

Depression, hopelessness, and self-esteem: accounting for suicidality in adolescent psychiatric inpatients

The present study was designed to examine depression, hopelessness, and self-esteem as related to suicidal behavior in three groups of depressed adolescent psychiatric inpatients. Depressed adolescents who had never attempted suicide were compared to depressed adolescents who had attempted suicide once and to depressed adolescents who had attempted suicide on several different occasions. Results showed that suicidal adolescents experienced significantly greater depression and hopelessness than did the nonsuicidal adolescents. However, all three groups of depressed adolescents reported similar low levels of self-esteem. Measures of depression and hopelessness were useful in classifying the adolescents based on their suicidal behavior. Results suggest that the treatment of suicidal adolescents could benefit from strategies that focus on reducing feelings of depression and hopelessness.     

Physiological Reactions to a Suicide Film: Suicide Attempters,Suicide Ideators,and Nonsuicidal Patients

A film about two teenagers who commit suicide was shown to three groups of psychiatric inpatients: 17 who had attempted suicide, 20 who had expressed suicidal thoughts, and 10 who were not suicidal. Anxiety before and after the film was evaluated with psychometric (anxiety rating scale) and physiological tools (heart and respiration rate, blood pressure, electromyogram). Values noted before and after screening, and the degree of change in these values, were compared. In addition, psychomotor agitation was rated at several points during the film. Most results were negative. The suicide attempters had significantly lower postscreening heart rates and a significantly lesser change in heart and respiration rates than the other two groups. The suicide attempters revealed an increase in psychomotor agitation until the discovery of the suicide and a decrease thereafter, whereas the agitation of the nonsuicidal patients continued to increase from the start to the end of the film. The study suggests that on some parameters, suicide attempters reveal less anxiety than nonsuicidal psychiatric patients following exposure to a simulated suicide. The reaction of suicide ideators falls somewhere between the two groups.     

Some Social and Psychological Factors Related to Suicide in Primitive Societies: A Cross-Cultural Comparative Study

ABSTRACT: Using a sample of primitive and peasant societies from the Human Relations Area Files, this paper examines some of the social and psychological factors related to suicide prevalence. Although the sample is small, the results are quite striking, and a multivariate analysis accounts for about 70 percent of the variance in suicide prevalence. In these data, suicide prevalence is quite consistently high where (a) the society involved is of the stable agricultural type (vs. hunting-gathering type), (b) the society customarily expects either very restrained or very open expression of the emotions (vs. more moderate expression of the emotions), and (c) the society customarily places a great deal of importance on individual pride and shame (vs. little or no emphasis on such matters).     

Suicides among family members of elderly suicide victims: an exploratory study

This exploratory study compares elderly suicides with (n=13) and without (n=72) family member suicide. Previous episodes of suicidal behavior were more common among suicides who lost first-degree relatives by suicide (100% vs. 65%, p = .009). Six persons had lost an offspring by suicide prior to their own deaths. Substance use disorder was more prevalent among those with offspring suicide than those without (100% vs. 25%, p = .000). While informants reported that offspring suicides played a central role in the suicide of the elderly study case, sibbling suicides were not considered precipitating factors.     

The Gender Ratio of Chinese Suicide Rates: An Explanation in Confucianism

The gender (male to female) ratio of the Chinese suicide rates is different from those found in the rest of the world. None of the other societies with known suicide data has had female suicide rates higher than those for the males. While we investigate the factors that contribute to the relatively high suicide rates for Chinese women, we also need to ask what makes the relatively low suicide rates for Chinese men. In this study we try to examine some social and cultural variables in rural Chinese youths in order to identify the factors that account for the relatively low rate for men and relatively high rate for women. In rural China, 392 suicides (both men and women) aged 14–35 years consecutively sampled from 16 counties of three provinces were studied with 416 community living controls of the same age range and from the same locations. Case–control psychological autopsy method was used for the data collection. It is found that believing in Confucianism and being married are both protecting the rural young men from suicide, while the two same variables are either risk or non-protecting factors for the Chinese rural young women’s suicide. In rural China, social structure and culture may play an even more important role determining a society’s suicide rates as well as the gender ratios. Thus, suicide prevention may need to include culture specific measures.     

Fractal Structure of Event Segmentation: Lessons From Reel and Real Events

We investigated fractality in the segmentation of cinematic and live events. Four movies from distinct genres were first analyzed and found to be fractal, albeit in different regions of the fractal range. In Experiment 1, viewers parsed the films' events, attending to short or long timescales, using a button box to indicate break points. The temporal structure of film viewing was found to be fractal regardless of the scale of attention and to reflect the differing fractal editing structure of the films. Experiment 2 found event segmentation to be fractal in a natural setting, a basketball game, as well. An additional parallel between reel and real events was uncovered: fractal indices were at the higher end of the range for both the film genre intended to be anxiogenic and the more suspenseful portion of the basketball game. We argue that the fractal structure of perception reflects the fractal structure of events whether the events are in film or in nature. We speculate that fractal structure has implications for understanding subjective experience and, ultimately, the correspondence between films and the world.     

Endocrinology and suicide

The data accumulated so far suggest several tentative conclusions. First, thyroid and adrenal gland disease unquestionably can produce severe mental disturbances. Most of these are "organic" in nature, but depressive symptoms are common as well. A connection between these diseases and suicide has not been established, however. Research cannot really address this possibility adequately, since these studies are difficult, if not impossible, to do in the postmortem state at this time. Ways should continue to be sought to overcome this problem. Clinically, it seems advisable to treat all depressed, suicidal persons with the same caution, whether they have diseases of these endocrine systems or not. The differences in responsiveness of the thyroid and adrenocortical systems among depressed and perhaps truly suicidal persons are of greater theoretical as well as practical clinical interest. The TRH-TSH test and the DST may not be as specific as once thought. Nonetheless, the abnormalities do occur with regularity in specific subgroups of depressed patients. It is far too early to stop research on the DST or the TRH-TSH test. Clinically, however, it is premature to make important management decisions about suicidal patients based on these test results. At this time, we really have no means of pinpointing the persons who will eventually suicide. The hope that they may someday provide valid data for assessing real suicide potential is there, and clinicians should stay informed in this arena. Until that day comes, though, we must continue to exercise caution regarding our clinical judgments and to live with their uncertainties.     

Suicidality and associated risk factors among lesbian, gay, and bisexual compared to heterosexual Austrian adults

This is the first study in German-speaking countries to compare the suicidality of lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults (n = 358) with matched heterosexual adults (n = 267). The former had significantly elevated incidences of current suicide ideation (28% vs. 13%) and lifetime suicide attempts defined in three ways (14% vs. 1% to 10% vs. 2%), including higher incidences for most suicidality-related risk factors. Increased psychosocial stress and vulnerability is indicated, especially with respect to a lack of family support. Controlling for risk factors in multivariate analysis diminished the association of sexual orientation with current suicide ideation.     

Some Results from an Automated Statewide Comparison among Attempted,Committed, and Nonsuicidal Patients

ABSTRACT: In the Missouri Division of Mental Health statewide automated Standard System of Psychiatry, 151 patients who had attempted suicide were compared with 424 who had not and with 97 who had committed suicide. Much of the data was provided from relatives using an automated history. Compared with nonattempters, attempters were younger and more often female, depressed, assaultive, and had a family history of suicide. Actual suicides were more often male, better educated, and in general more resembled the attempters than nonattempters.     

Belief in the inevitability of suicide: results from a national survey

To examine public opinion regarding the effectiveness of means restriction as an approach to preventing suicide we asked a national sample of 2,770 respondents a hypothetical question about what effect a suicide barrier might have had on the ultimate fate of the more than 1,000 people who have jumped to their death from the Golden Gate Bridge. Thirty-four percent of respondents believed that every single jumper would have found another way to complete suicide and an additional 40% believed that "most" would have completed suicide using other means. The strongest predictors of belief in complete substitution were firearm ownership and cigarette smoking. Belief in the inevitability of suicide may be a political impediment to adopting potentially effective suicide prevention efforts.     

Physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia: German Protestantism, conscience, and the limits of purely ethical reflection.

In this essay I shall describe and analyse the current debate on physician assisted suicide in contemporary German Protestant church and theology. It will be shown that the Protestant (mainly Lutheran) Church in Germany together with her Roman Catholic sister church has a specific and influential position in the public discussion: The two churches counting the majority of the population in Germany among their members tend to "organize" a social and political consensus on end-of-life questions. This cooperation is until now very successful: Speaking with one voice on end-of-life questions, the two churches function as the guardians of a moral consensus which is appreciated even by many non-believers. Behind this joint service to society the lines of the theological debate have to be ree-discovered. First it will be argued that a Protestant reading of the joint memoranda has to be based on the concept of individual conscience. The crucial questions are then: Whose conscience has the authority to decide? and: Can the physician assisted suicide be desired faithfully? Prominent in the current debate are Ulrich Eibach as a strict defender of the sanctity of life, and on the other side Walter Jens and Hans Kung, who argue for a right to physician assisted suicide under extreme conditions. I shall argue that it will be necessary to go beyond this actual controversy to the works of Gerhard Ebeling and Karl Barth for a clear and instructive account of conscience and a theological analysis of the concepts of life and suicide. On the basis of their considerations, a conscience-related approach to physician assisted suicide is developed.     

Young suicide attempters compared with a control group: psychological, affective, and attitudinal variables

Suicide attempters admitted to a general hospital psychiatric ward completed questionnaires to elicit information following their suicide attempt. Compared to normal controls who had never attempted suicide, suicide attempters were significantly more hopeless, depressed, and hostile. The suicide attempts seemed to occur in response to stress. A crisis intervention model was suggested as the most appropriate way of managing these patients.     

The Cinema of Control: On Diabetic Excess and Illness in Film

While not rare, films that represent diabetes must work around the disease’s banal invisibility, and images of diabetics in film are especially susceptible to metaphor and exaggeration. This essay is the first to outline a diabetic filmography, discussing medical and cinematic strategies for visualizing the disease as well as how the illness informs family plots and heroic characters in horror films. Doing so, it participates in a larger discussion of the manner in which film images of ill or disabled groups sustain notions of “normalcy” by both representing and denying otherness.     

The Phenomenological Film Collective: Introducing a cinematic‐phenomenological research method for social advocacy filmmaking

This paper introduces the vision for the Phenomenological Film Collective ( pfcollective.com ), a research and filmmaking group which utilizes phenomenological research in the service of social advocacy filmmaking. I outline the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of developing a “cinematic‐phenomenological research method” for PFCollective in order to illuminate lived experiences of sociocultural oppression for public viewership via cinematography. The roots of cinematic phenomenology are situated within the theoretical framework of liberation psychology, which calls on psychologists to pursue research that can facilitate consciousness‐raising and social justice across society. The paper provides a methodological overview of existential‐hermeneutic phenomenological research and discusses how its research findings can be disseminated to the widespread public in artistic formats. I demonstrate how filmmaking is an appropriate aesthetic language through which to disseminate phenomenological research about lived experiences of oppression, grounding this proposition in phenomenological philosophy and liberation psychology. I outline the procedural steps for conducting cinematic‐phenomenological research to produce phenomenological films about oppressive sociocultural phenomena. The paper concludes with suggestions for academic disciplines to become more interdisciplinary in our collective pursuit for social advocacy and change.     

Aspects of suicidal behavior, depression, and treatment in college students: results from the spring 2000 national college health assessment survey

The National College Health Assessment Survey (NCHA), sponsored by the American College Health Association, measured depression, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts among 15,977 college students in the academic year 1999-2000. Similar to the National College Health Risk Behavior Survey, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1995, 9.5% of students reported that they had seriously considered attempting suicide and 1.5% of students reported that they had attempted suicide within the last school year. The NCHA findings show a relationship between suicidal behavior and depressed mood. Depressed mood, difficulties of sexual identity, and problematic relationships all increase the likelihood of vulnerability to suicidal behavior. Less than 20% of students reporting suicidal ideation or attempts were receiving treatment.     

Neiwai,civility, and gender distinctions

The spatial bipolar of neiwai, that marks proper gender distinctions in the Chinese world, is often assumed to be congruous with the Western dualistic concept of private/public. However, the neiwai binary in the Chinese imaginary is rather a shifting boundary between what is perceived as central and peripheral, or civil and barbaric. In the following, we will explore the philosophical roots of the term neiwai whose ritual, symbolic functions in the process of genderization are extended beyond gender and are intrinsically intertwined with the very defining features of a civilized society.     

Perfectionism,Stress, Daily Hassles,Hopelessness, and Suicide Potential in Depressed Psychiatric Adolescents

The current study examined dimensions of perfectionism, stress, hopelessness, and suicidality in a sample of adolescent psychiatric patients diagnosed with depression. This study evaluated the unique contribution of perfectionism in predicting suicidality after considering other predictors (i.e., hopelessness, depression) and it also examined the diathesis-stress model of perfectionism and suicide. A sample of 55 adolescents (41 females, mean age = 15.53, 25.5 % ethnic/racial minorities) who were psychiatric patients completed measures including the Child-Adolescent Perfectionism Scale, subjective and objective indices of life stress, daily hassles, depression, hopelessness, suicide ideation, prior attempts and suicide potential. In addition, other informants (i.e., adolescents’ parents) completed a diagnostic interview and an interview assessing major stressful experiences. Socially prescribed perfectionism (i.e., the perception that others require perfection of oneself) predicted concurrent levels of suicide potential and this association with suicide potential held even after controlling for the variances accounted for by depression and hopelessness. Hierarchical regression analyses provided partial support for the diathesis-stress model, that is, socially prescribed perfectionism interacted with daily hassles to predict concurrent suicide potential even after controlling for depression, hopelessness, and prior suicide attempt. Together, these findings suggest that socially prescribed perfectionism acts as a vulnerability factor that is predictive of suicide potential or risk among clinically depressed adolescents.