clinical

2003-01-19T04:54:00.000-08:00

Although the nature-versus-nurture debate still rages in some psychiatric circles, most researchers who study suicide fall somewhere in the middle. "You need several things to go wrong at once," explains Victoria Arango of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, which is affiliated with Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. "I'm not saying that suicide is purely biological, but it starts with having an underlying biological risk." Life experience, acute stress and psychological factors each play a part, she asserts. At the root of the mystery of suicide, however, lies a nervous system whose lines of communication have become tangled into unbearably painful knots. [more>

I've been suicidal when life circumstances were wonderful. What it takes isn't things going wrong, as the article suggests, but a deep belief that life (my mental states) will never improve.

2003-01-12T23:13:00.000-08:00

Healy had designed his "healthy volunteer study" to compare the psychological experience of being on a serotonin antidepressant versus a non-serotonin antidepressant, but before he knew it, two of his volunteers became dangerously agitated and suicidal. Both were taking the SSRI drug. The adverse reactions couldn't easily be blamed on psychological instability – these were healthy volunteers. And the rate of 10 percent made it clear that such results were not so rare as to be incidental.

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I think I would have killed myself long ago if not for SSRIs. The pain I felt was so large and so inexplicable.

2003-01-04T00:51:00.000-08:00

These two women were lucky to be born with a joyous temperament, which in its most extreme forms is called hyperthymia. Cheerful despite life's misfortunes, energetic and productive, they are often the envy of all who know them because they don't even have to work at it.

In a sense, they are the psychiatric mirror image of people who suffer from a chronic, often lifelong, mild depression called dysthymia, which affects about 3 percent of American adults. Always down, dysthymics experience little pleasure and battle through life with a dreary pessimism. Despite whatever fortune comes their way, they remain glum.[more>

2002-12-17T02:43:00.000-08:00

From an email—
From Rachel Murphy, HOW MIGRANT LABOR IS CHANGING RURAL CHINA)
(207) "Although beyond the scope of what I was able to investigate in the
villages [of Jiangxi], some Chinese academics hinted to me that in the
countryside there is a high suicide rate among [women who return to the
countryside after having been migrant workers in cities of Guangdong]. A
recent study in rural China found that the suicide rate among women is five
times higher than the world average. Moreover, the victimes tend to have
above-average levels of education and some degree of exposire to the outside
world."
In an endnote she further elaborates this.
(248) "Lijia MacLeod, "The Dying Fields." A study by the World Bank, the
World Health Organization, and Harvard University finds that 56.6% of female
suicides occur in China, yet only 21% of the world's women live there."

2002-12-12T21:17:00.000-08:00

Sheep dip linked to depression

2002-12-12T05:25:00.000-08:00

When I accidentally skip my medication, every nerve in my body begins to vibrate. Like a thin piano wire runs through each nerve, and vibrations increase exponentially. The feeling of buzzing, frantic motion while I'm sitting still.

2002-12-12T04:02:00.000-08:00

In the news: Self-Injury No Longer Rare Among Teens

Nov. 21, 2002 -- For desperate teenagers overwhelmed with emotions that they cannot express, deliberate self-injury is becoming an increasingly popular and dangerous form of self-expression.
A British study of nearly 6,000 students shows that over their lifetime, 13% of 15- and 16-year-olds have carried out an act of deliberate self-harm. Within the past year, an act of deliberate self-harm occurred in about 400 of the students. Only 50 students went to the hospital, which suggests that the problem may be even more widespread. American experts say those numbers aren't surprising, but until now there has been relatively little research on the issue.

2002-12-08T14:40:00.000-08:00

News clip: Berlin art-goers mistake suicide victim for performance art.

2002-11-20T22:06:00.000-08:00

I was walking down the street, fall had turned the sky grey. Two birds shot overhead, and they seemed to hang forever in the sky. They weren't flying forward. They were an engraving, markings on the sky, and as time passed, the birds were etched deeper, but never moved.
I decided to kill myself. I felt I was the sky, the wind, the street. We had always existed, and we had always been the same, and I would never see anything I didn't recognize.

2002-11-18T23:33:00.000-08:00

The NY Times reviews two books on suicide, one written by a survivor of three suicide attempts, the other written about the families left behind by suicide.

"The fantasy of killing myself remained strong because it was a habit, an addiction," she wrote. "I spent hundreds of hours planning my funeral and imagining the remorse of my family and friends."
Though she concedes that suicidal thoughts may be with her for the rest of her life, she has persevered, learning how to "outthink suicide" with a wide variety of techniques. They include developing an understanding of how the nervous system works, learning to recognize what sets off feelings, knowing how and when to ask for help, keeping a journal and designing a crisis plan.
The crisis plan is "a recipe for survival," intended to "keep you safe when your brain starts flipping out."

2002-11-08T14:17:00.000-08:00

An abstract from Sleep Medicine Reviews:"The common neurobiological mechanisms resulting from pharmacological antidepressant treatment and sleep deprivation suggest that sleep loss in some insomniac or in depressed patients might be an endogenous compensatory process which would be therapeutical rather than pathological."
Basically, insomnia is your body's way of coping with depression; the less sleep you get, the batter you may feel.

2002-11-06T19:05:00.000-08:00

My moods go up and down really quickly. I woke up this morning wanting to tackle all of the things that made me anxious. Because, on my birthday, I have immunity; this is my day, and not my obstacles'.
But things went poorly. Some of the stuff I've been putting off has escalated into a real problem. And, emotionally, I wasn't prepared to deal. I ended up cutting myself. Just three slashes on the upper arm, barely drew blood. Drew a thin line and then a pearl of red, that hardened into a small diamond.
But that's not really right. When I was in a good mood this morning, I was looking at my wrist—at two thin horizantal cuts I made last week. And, aesthetically, I thought it would be better if the lines connected. So took a razor and retraced the crease between my palm and wrist. Now, the line is simple, elegant, like the inside of a watch or bracelet.

2002-11-06T17:20:00.000-08:00

Nov. 6. Today is my birthday. Any day meant to validate my existence will open up the possibility of it being invalidated. If my father's flowers are meant to celebrate my birth, my boyfriend forgetting to call performs the opposite function. Neglecting my birthday is a message that my presence in his life is forgettable.
I think this is exaggerating the slight. But, my point is this: opposites travel together. If I'm supposed to interpret cards and gifts as validation, I have to also be aware that a lack of cards and gifts can be interpreted as invalidation.