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…
Many former NFL players face the future with despair: the years after retirement can include an array of physical and financial woes.
USA Today Sports/Reuters
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…
Barriers around bridges could save lives.
rcgtrrz/Flickr
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…
Tapping into a public stream.
Indiana Public Media
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…
Rehabilitation is the point isn’t it?
Prison by Shutterstock
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…
Homicide-suicides are usually perpetrated by men who murder a current or former intimate partner.
Lukas Koch/AAP
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…
A still from the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s award-winning Be Deadly Online campaign.
ACMAcybersmart/YouTube
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…
Suicidal thoughts among women were more common in developed countries but men were three times more likely to die by suicide.
`Etienne/Flickr
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…
People want answers, but the media has a responsibility to protect.
EPA/Tracey Nearmy
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…
Sensitive reporting is required when reporting suicide.
Tracey Nearmy/EPA
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…
How to cover suicide has always been a contentious issue for journalists.
EPA/JANOS MARJAI HUNGARY OUT
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…
It might seem odd that successful, creative and funny people like Robin Williams, can be fundamentally unhappy.
Robert Brye/Handout
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…
Smoking may increase psychological risk factors for suicide – and raising taxes may lower them. An American study has found…
Historical evidence of suicide rates varying with the philosophy of the times urges caution about adopting an unqualified libertarian stance that privileges autonomy above all else.
Arallyn!/Flickr
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…
Philip Nitschke and David Leyonhjelm have appealed libertarian ideals in their arguments for euthanasia and same-sex marriage respectively.
Joe Castro & Luca Koch/AAP
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…
Dr Philip Nitschke admits advising a healthy 45-year-old man who later killed himself.
AAP Image/Julian Smith
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…
Dejected South Korean fans after their team lost against Algeria.
EPA/Kim Chul-Soo
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