Strollerderby : suicide

6 Reasons to Hate Mother's Day

Miriam Axel-Lute — Sun, 10 May 2009 10:04:00 GMT

It was originally an antiwar holiday, but was defanged and corrupted to be about cards and flowers and brunch.
It was originally an antiwar holiday, meaning you should be vigiling or writing letters to Congress when all you want is to sleep in and have brunch.
The hoopla over it as compared to Father's Day just proves how society still expects moms to do most of the parenting.
The one time someone takes you to brunch, everyone else is doing it and there's a 45 minute wait.
Someone will always bring up the false idea that Mother's Day is a top suicide day, in case you felt like forgetting to mail the cards in time or not arranging your day to plump the self-esteem of every mother in your extended family was forgivable just this once.
All the attention is not about you anyway, it's just about the part of you people have been overemphasizing since your first kid was born anyway.

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Sylvia Plath's Son Takes His Own Life: Is Suicide Hereditary?

Kate Tuttle — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:01:00 GMT

News came this week (though it happened last week) of the suicide of Nicholas Hughes, son of famed poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. According to Frieda Hughes, the couple's surviving daughter, her brother, who was 47 and a professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, had been battling depresion for some time. But although his suicide may not have come as a shock to those who knew him and his personal sadness, it reverberated with a sickening familiarity when heard by those familiar with his parents' lives -- and it raises questions pyschologists and researchers are still trying to answer, including the big one: is suicide a hereditary act?

Nicholas was just a baby when his mother Sylvia, despairing at the collapse of her marriage to future poet laurete Hughes, took her own life by means of gas oven while he and his sister slept in another room. She put towels under the door to insulate them from the fumes, and pinned her suicide note to the children's pram. Six years later, his stepmother, the woman for whom Hughes had left Plath, killed herself and her four-year-old daughter, using the same method Plath had. Nicholas Hughes didn't copy those earlier suicides -- he hanged himself -- but it's impossible not to wonder how much his actions were influenced by theirs.

Ted Hughes weathered years of accusations and recriminations for his role in the deaths of his wives, and for how he treated their work after they died. But by all accounts he was a loving and protective father, and it can't have been easy to raise a son left motherless so young, and so violently. He writes of how, after his mother's death, the baby's eyes:

Became wet jewels

The hardest substance of the purest pain

As I fed him in his high white chair.

Was it that "purest pain" that led, 46 years later, to another suicide? Or was it something genetic, a predisposition afflicting both mother and son, lying in wait? The science isn't entirely clear, although for some gentic mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder, the suicide rate is approaching 20%. Some families have a vein of suicide running through them, and it can be hard to tease out which part is genetic and which part comes down as an emotional and historical birthright. But this much is certain: if you couple an inborn vulnerability with a life of such stunningly large losses as Hughes faced, his death is, sadly, not a surprise.

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They Say: Abuse Changes a Child's Brain

Kate Tuttle — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:26:00 GMT

Researchers who had previously studied the relationships between stress responses and maternal nurturing in animals have taken their work into a new arena, looking at how human brains are affected, in adulthood, by abuse and neglect suffered in childhood. The study, carried out at McGill University in Montreal, is very small (it compared the brains of 12 suicide victims who had been abused to 12 suicide victims who had not been, against a control group of 12 non-suicide brains) but, many in the field agree, could lead to larger-scale research into how childhood trauma can cause lifelong damage to a person's ability to handle stress.

Like so many studies of how human beings work, this one seems to only confirm the obvious: who among us wouldn't instinctively know that a terrible childhood leaves permanent scars? And yet it goes further than that -- if a biological brain difference is found, therapies could be developed that would offer some hope of healing those previously unhealable wounds. And just as the researchers' previous work had looked at the multi-generational effect of both good and bad animal parenting, perhaps their ultimate goal would be to figure out how to end the cycle of bad human parenting, one formerly abused or neglected child at a time.

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They Say: Shunning Gay Kids Bad for Their Health

JeanneSager — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:36:00 GMT

Gee, who would have ever thought being told they're just not good enough could be bad for kids?

Apparently researchers at the César E. Chávez Institute at San Francisco State University. They actually took money and did a full-fledged study to figure out gay kids are at higher risk for a number of health problems if they're shunned by their families. Ya think?

What ever happened to funding studies that do things like - oh I don't know - find a cure for children's cancer?

The study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics showed a link between the family rejection of lesbian, gay and bisexual kids and a higher risk of a serious health problems, such as depression, illegal drug use, risk for HIV infection, and suicide attempts. Compared to kids who came from families who were accepting of their sexuality, those who experienced rejection were more than eight times more likely to have attempted suicide, almost six times more likely to be depressed, three times more likely to use illegal drugs and three times more likely to have unprotected sex.

I'm not excusing the parents here - they need to get a grip. But let's say they struck sexuality from the criteria and looked simply at kids who were rejected by their families versus those we were accepted. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a child who's mom or dad tells them they're worthless who hasn't contemplated suicide or wouldn't qualify for a dose of Prozac.

It's encouraging that researchers are willing to look at sexuality in children - lending further credence to the fact that people are born gay (or straight), and evidence of sexuality in kids is natural. But sometimes, they just go too far to categorize kids and families. Gay kids need love. So do straight kids. If parents can't provide it, their kids are in trouble, period.

Image/Source: RedOrbit

They Say: Schools Near Fast Food Makes Fat Kids

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Students Watch Autopsy of Teen From School

JeanneSager — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:04:00 GMT

I'm not really crazy about sending my kid out to watch an autopsy to begin with. Yes, even in the name of science. But when the body a class of teens is watching the medical examiner cut up belongs to a fourteen-year-old from their school district, you've lost me completely.

It's exactly what happened at a Michigan ME's office; even after the teacher was warned that the teenagers in her high school science class would be subjected to the autopsy of a middle school student from the same school district who had committed suicide.

The Detroit News reported the teacher put it out to her students, kids in the eleventh and twelfth grades at Waterford Kettering High School. None of the kids actually knew the girl, although one student knew the deceased's brother. The ME's office in Oakland County has decided to stop all future high school tours because of the case, but I'd say all the adults involved here need to be reviewing their actions. Kids watching dead kids be examined? It's the stuff that can cause some pretty severe nightmares, not to mention a host of issues for the child's family.

That older teens might be sent to see an autopsy as part of their exploration of potential careers is one thing. Personally I think that kind of thing should be limited to kids who have expressed an interest in the medical field, not required viewing for a regular upper-level science class. If kids feel they're going to be upset by watching a body carved up, by all means, let them stay back in the school building and do busy work.

And the kids who choose to make the trip? They should not be watching the process being done on another child, especially one who they might know in one way, shape or form. Adults have a hard enough time stomaching the thoughts of harm having come to a child. Professionals who deal with this type of thing on a daily basis, despite all their attempts to become immune to the horrors specific to the loss of a child, still struggle. Ask any district attorney who has had to prosecute the case of a child's death if he doesn't go home at night and hug his kids just that much tighter. To expect teenagers, still kids themselves, to process that sort of thing - or to think that asking them beforehand if they're OK with it and expecting their teenaged-bravado not to get in the way - is a failure to protect a piece of their innocence.

Yes, they can see this sort of thing on CSI. But a fake body on a screen has nothing on a real body laid out in front of them, the body of a child they know has walked through the same halls where they once studied math and science.

Let's let kids be kids - as long as we can.

Image: The Detroit News

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British Parents Defend Son’s Suicide

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:30:00 GMT

After becoming paralyzed in a rugby training session, Daniel James repeatedly reiterated his desire for death to his friends and family. Last month, the 23-year-old Brit traveled to Switzerland, where he died at an assisted suicide clinic.

It goes without saying that Daniel’s parents, Julie and Mark James, are filled with grief. But they have stated that they respect their son’s decision. They wrote in a statement that his death, though a huge tragedy for those he left behind, was “no doubt a welcome relief from the 'prison' he felt his body had become and the day-to-day fear and loathing of his living existence.”

Helping someone take his life is illegal in Britain; prosecutors are looking into the circumstances of James’ death, but have not yet stated that they will press any charges.

Photo: MSNBC

A Tragic Secret Revealed About 'Anne' Author

Amy Kuras — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:59:00 GMT

Well this is just plain sad: The granddaughter of L.M. Montgomery, beloved author of the Anne Of Green Gables books revealed recently to the Toronto Globe and Mail that her grandmother’s death at the age of 67 was in fact suicide via a drug overdose.

Montgomery had apparently suffered from deep feelings of anxiety and dread and felt isolated and sad for much of her life. None of this was a secret to her descendents, or to scholars who have written biographies of Montgomery or studied her work.

Kate MacDonald Butler told the Globe and Mail that she and her family decided to come forward because of a series on the Canadian mental health system the paper did this year, and also the renewed attention to Montgomery on the 100th anniversary of Anne of Green Gables’ publication.

They wanted to bring attention to the idea that mental illness can and does strike anyone, Butler said. It’s likely her sense of isolation was exacerbated by the times in which she lived, when depression and other mental illnesses were seen more as weaknesses of character than imbalances of chemistry.

I loved Anne of Green Gables when I was a girl (really, between this and Little Women, I didn’t grow up in the 1930s or anything, I just loved classic books) and still envy redheads and harbor dreams of seeing Prince Edward Island because of reading them.

While it’s not surprising that someone who wrote so prolifically struggled with sadness – perhaps she was so prolific exactly because the idyllic worlds of Avonlea and Ingleside provided an escape from the sadness that engulfed her daily life – it’s still sad to think that she took her own life. As much joy and pleasure as she brought to others through the characters she created, I wish for her sake and that of her family’s that she could have enjoyed some joy of her own as well.

The Best of FameCrawler: Week of June 13th

Whit Honea — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Jude Law Gets It

Jessica Alba Gives Birth!!

A Sad Time in the Marson Family

George Clooney and Sarah Larson: Boobs, Not Babies Blamed For Breakup

READER POLL: Strangest Celebrity Baby Names

Heather Locklear: Drunk, Sloppy and Busting Out The Inner Gangsta

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt Are Freakin' Insane

Lionel Richie: I Survived Nicole

Psstt - Angelina Jolie Has A Secret!

Michelle Duggar Should Write a Book on Pregnancy

MySpace Hoax Mom Indicted

Kelly Mills — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:27:00 GMT

Remember Lori Drew? How about Megan Meier? Megan, a thirteen-year-old, hung herself after her MySpace boyfriend, Josh, cruelly dumped her. This itself would be bad enough, but the real ugly part is that Josh didn't exist. He was the creation of Lori Drew, who was Megan's neighbor and the mother of a girl Megan was once friends with. Drew, with the aid of a nineteen-year-old employee of hers, created Josh, maintained a relationship with Megan, laughed abut it and let her daughter and daughter's friend in on the joke, and then had "Josh" tell Megan the world would be better off without her.

Since being a phenomenally evil creep isn't a crime, investigators didn't charge Drew in the case. But now a federal grand jury has indicted her on one count of conspiracy and three counts of using protected computers without authorization to get information used to harass and torment a teenage girl. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. The indictment includes the fact that MySpace users agree to terms forbidding users from promoting information they know to be false, soliciting personal information from anyone under eighteen, and using the site to harass others. Drew of course did all of the above. Too bad there isn't really a punishment that can make up for what she did.

Photo: Tom Gannam / AP

Coping with Disability: Mother of Autistic Son Contemplates Suicide

Cole Gamble — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

This incredibly open and boldly honest story featured in The Guardian details one mother’s journey to the breaking point. This may be the kind of story people don’t want to hear, the kind some might even feel is repulsive, which is all the more reason people need to hear it… To have some understanding for this woman’s situation, think about your own kids. I, for example, have two regular kids: a four-year-old and a one-year-old. Though they are lovely separately, put them together and add the new addition of a puppy to our house, and it’s a screaming, destructive cyclone. If this was all I had to do I could see not wanting to jump out the window, but I work a full time job, work a whole other full time job at home freelance writing and blogging and the kids and dog are a full time job in itself. The other night Dalton, our 1-year-old, screamed and screamed until 1 am. Being robbed of the ability to hold onto one clear thought at some point in your day or even having the choice to decide when you want to go to bed is enough to make you want to jump a train and live a life on the rails. We are not supposed to complain about our children, and I am not. When I can snatch half a second of clear thought, all my frustration toward my kids melts away and I see their actions for what they are, experiment, play and emotional development. But when you don’t get that break, down that path madness lies. Now take the standard madness of parenthood and imagine that intensity multiplied by a factor of ten. Parents of autistic children often don’t even get that half second of sanity I mentioned. They barely get a chance to get their head above water. I know parents with autistic kids, and it is a full time business. Often one of the parents makes the difficult but necessary choice to stop working and stay home with the child. There can be no end to the sacrifices. A common first reaction to this mother’s story of contemplated suicide might be “what a horrible thought.” And it is a horrible thought, which is why it is so important this mother and others like her tell these stories. Being a strong and good parent isn’t hiding from the pain and desperation, it’s exploring it and most importantly sharing so those in similar situations may learn and understand.

Photo: www.just2moms.com

17th Teen Kills Self In Town With Multiple Suicides

Kelly Mills — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:33:00 GMT

A town in Wales is reeling from a wave of teen suicides, and when a 16-year-old girl was found hanging in the woods this week, the total deaths reached 17 in a little over one year. Some media reports have speculated on a possible internet suicide pact among teens in the area, but the police say there is no evidence of this or of any possible criminal causes of the deaths. While many of the victims did use a social networking site, the authorities say this played no part in the deaths, and argue against the more sensational media coverage. The parents of a 15-year-old boy in the same area who killed himself last week ask for more media restraint, and say "their son may have been influenced by media reports they believe glamorized earlier suicides."

Is there an internet connection between the teens who took their own lives? Sadly, "suicide clusters" where several teens in an area kill themselves over a span of a few to many years, are not unheard of, and certainly pre-date social networking sites. There's been many observed suicide clusters around the world and sociologists have even used them as evidence of the profound influence of society on even our own instinct towards self-preservation. Teens and young adults are the most suceptible to clusters, and in many ways we still don't understand mass suicide, let alone have tons of effective means of prevention. And they are profoundly tragic for the parents of the teens who kill themselves, and terrifying to the parents of adolescents in the area.

Short Babies More Prone to Later Suicide

Karen Murphy — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:30:00 GMT

Short People got no reason
To live

They got little hands
And little eyes
And they walk around
Tellin' great big lies
They got little noses
And tiny little teeth

Apparently, short people have taken these lyrics to heart: a new Swedish study finds that babies, especially boys, who were short at birth (under 18.5 inches) had a more than double risk of later suicide.

Talk about cutting your life short!

Uh, sorry, I'll stop with the short jokes now. (By the way? My younger son was 18 inches at birth)

The study looked at national (Swedish) birth data from 1973 through 1980, and suicide-attempt data up to 1999, and found a correlation between birth length (also birth weight to a lesser degree) and suicide attempts, especially violent suicides. The theory, then, is that brain chemistry is affected by fetal growth. Um, well, of course it is. Everything can be linked, somehow, to fetal development, at least those things that aren't strictly environmental (except fetal development can affect what the body does with environmental influences, so we're back there again, aren't we?).

I'm pretty sure about all we can do for kids who happened to be short at birth is to love them and hope they have a good life, same as we'd be doing anyway (and same as we do for kids an inch longer or whatever at birth), but the thought is to provide extra reason for good prenatal nutrition and care. The suicide link is thought to be caused by lower-than-usual levels of serotonin, which develops during the 2nd trimester, so as usual we're blaming mom's drug use, alcohol use, or steadfast refusal to "eat for two". Though I'm guessing that plenty of shorter babies are born to mothers who do everything "right".

So is this one more thing to worry about needlessly? Or is it another validation that we should be doing all we can to create happy, healthy babies?

Photo: a.abcnews.com

Fewer Kids Dying From Cancer

Madeline Holler — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:27:00 GMT

There’s never been a better time to have a kid with cancer. Wait, that doesn’t sound quite right. What I’m trying to say is that deaths from childhood cancer are declining rapidly.

The chances of surviving a number of cancers that strike young children fell 20 percent from 1990 to 2004. The big fall is mostly attributed to improvements in the treatment for leukemia.

Death from cancer is the fourth-leading cause of death for children, that’s behind accidents, homicides and suicides. (Let me back up for a second ... homicides? Suicides? Those last two are freaking me out.)

Though the rate of death from cancer is decreasing for kids, the number who died in 2004 is sobering: 2,223. That’s a lot of kids in one year. (Now I’m thinking about the other causes – there were even more who died from homicide! More than 2,000 kids murdered?).

Leukemia accounted for about a quarter of those cancer deaths, and brain and other nervous system tumors accounted for another 25 percent.

Interestingly, boys had a slightly higher death rate than girls. Oh, and the article says that children in the West have a higher mortality rate than the general population.

Update on Megan Meier Story: The Drews, and Making Online Harassment a Crime

Kelly Mills — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 14:09:00 GMT

Since the story of 13-year-old Megan Meier's suicide broke, the lives of Lori and Curt Drew have gotten real different. Lori Drew was the neighbor who created, along with an 18-year-old employee, a fictitious profile of a boy named "Josh" on MySpace. Megan considered Josh her boyfriend, and Lori Drew, her daughter, and the employee sent messages to Megan as Josh. When "Josh" abruptly broke off the relationship, saying he heard she wasn't nice to her friends, and others joined the online fray, sending insulting messages to Megan, she went upstairs to her bedroom and hung herself.

Lori and Curt Drew's personal information was widely circulated on the internet, where mass outrage was expressed (by me too) that an adult would do this to a teen. Megan's parents had no legal recourse against the Drews. Now the town where they lived has passed a resolution making cyberstalking a misdemeanor. The Drews have been widely condemned, and the day after the story broke someone called police and falsely reported a murder at the Drew residence. They've received death threats and a brick though their window. Now it seems the Drews have disappeared, leaving their home and their jobs. Their current whereabouts are largely unknown.

Suicide Rate Goes Up For Girls, Ages...10 to 14?

Kelly Mills — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:56:00 GMT

Here's the heartbreaking news of the day: suicide rates for kids ages 10 to 24, which had decreased since 1990, have now gone up by 8 percent. While rates for girls ages 15 to 19 went up by 32 percent, the biggest jump was in suicides among girls 10 to 14. Good lord, those are still lego and doll years. Now, while we are talking about small numbers here (94 suicides in that age group in 2004, compared to 56 in 2003) think about the fact that kids as young as 10 even have moments of contemplating the end of their lives. Middle school may have been one the lowest points in my existence, but still...ugh.

So why are the numbers going up? Researchers say: Um, we dunno. An decrease in antidepressant use among kids is one possible factor cited (yeah, there's a controversy brewing there,) as is the plain old suckiness and pressure of middle school. Basically it isn't clear yet if this is an anomaly or a trend. And I don't imagine it will be easy to prevent, since the warning signs include "mental illness, alcohol and drug use, family dysfunction and relationship problems." In other words: junior high, for some of us. And as I wrote this, I remembered how crappy that time was, and you know, it got a little easier to understand. But no less depressing.

More Casualties In Recall: Toy Manufacturer Suicide

Kelly Mills — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:30:00 GMT

Cheung Shu-hung, head of Lee Der Industrial Co. killed himself last weekend in an apparent suicide. Lee Der supplied Mattel with Sesame Street and Dora toys which have now been recalled for excessive amounts of lead in the paint. Cheung may have been duped in this whole thing: "After the recall, Lee Der maintained that its paint supplier, Cheung's best friend, supplied 'fake paint' used in the toys, the Southern Metropolis Daily said." The Chinese government temporarily banned Lee Der from exporting following the recall.

Tragedy dogpiles on top of tragedy. Is it too much to hope that perhaps some good can come out of all of this badness, with tougher standards on toys, better regulatory control and enforcement, and maybe even some long hard looks at our trade policies? Sigh. It probably is.