An important study that examines the social costs of the 2008 banking crisis and the economic recession it created has just been published. The analysis, carried out by Carlos Nordt and colleagues at the…
The cascade of woes that have befallen former NFL players has stunned fans and casual observers. Former NFL stars Junior Seau and Dave Duerson committed suicide. All-pro Warren Sapp went bankrupt after…
On April 15, 2014 a man jumped to his death from the O'Callaghan-Tillman Memorial Bridge – a massive, new concrete arch that soars over the Hoover Dam. He was the eighth known person to do so since the…
For more or less any topic we can think of, social media has great potential for both good and harm. One example is suicidal distress. It is increasingly common for people to express despairing and suicidal…
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, and 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…
Principal Research Fellow, Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention, National Centre of Excellence in Suicide Prevention, Griffith University