The huge increase in suicides in prison, along with violence and instances of poor care, demonstrate the sorry state of modern prisons today. The latest 2013-14 annual report from the chief inspector of…
Last week’s tragic deaths of the Hunt family, in what police are treating as a multiple homicide-suicide incident, have left a close-knit community in shock. It is always hard to understand why such events…
Tony Abbott is spending this week in North-East Arnhem Land, part of his long-held hope “to be not just the Prime Minister but the Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs”. We asked our experts: what stories…
Reema Rattan, The Conversation; Emil Jeyaratnam, The Conversation, dan Warren Clark, The Conversation
One person takes their own life every 40 seconds, equating to 803,900 deaths across the world every year, according to the first World Health Organization report on suicide prevention released today. “Preventing…
Suicide researchers are a robust group. We have to be. We are employed, often for years at a time, to think about death by suicide with the aim of finding patterns that can help to prevent further deaths…
The death of much-loved improviser extraordinaire Robin Williams at his own hand seems to have given some newspapers a green light to “go off on one” – delving into his psyche with gay abandon, detailing…
While fans were in collective mourning over the untimely death of Robin Williams, American TV channel Fox News’ Shepard Smith was making profuse apologies for calling the comedian a “coward” after his…
News of Robin Williams’s suicide will have taken many of us by surprise. We always feel a mix of emotions when we hear someone famous, successful, creative and much loved has been suffering unbearable…
Seven Australians will die today as a result of suicide, the leading cause of death in young Australian men. So the media interest surrounding one in particular, that of 45-year-old Nigel Brayley’s suicide…
The suspension of Philip Nitschke’s medical registration, and the events leading up to it, has sparked one of the most heated discussions about euthanasia in Australia for some time. What’s surprising…
People who operate on the edge risk falling over it and into the abyss. And euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke has been in freefall since it emerged he had email contact with a healthy 45-year-old West…
Several studies appear to show quite noticeable associations between hosting and performance at World Cups and suicide rates. When France hosted (and won) the football World Cup in 1998, the suicide rate…
Suicides among mental health patients under home treatment are double the number of suicides in in-patient units, according to a new study published in The Lancet Psychiatry which looks at suicide rates…
A British coroner has sparked anxiety among parents by linking Call of Duty, one of the most popular video games in the world, to teenage suicide. John Pollard says Call of Duty has “figured in recent…
A 20-year decline in suicide in the UK came to an end in 2007. Since then the suicide rate has been rising, especially among men, who are three times more likely than women to take their own lives. The…
Arguments surrounding the use of genetically modified crops and whether they are the solution to the world’s problems of food supply and public health are no nearer to resolution than when GM was introduced…
A health crisis in Greece brought on by national austerity measures has driven up cases of HIV, suicide, major depression, and infant death, and left hundreds of thousands locked out the health system…
Heatwaves and high temperatures can have a dramatic impact on people’s physical health. We only have to look at the increases in emergency department admissions during recent heatwaves to know that. But…
Principal Research Fellow, Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention, National Centre of Excellence in Suicide Prevention, Griffith University