Scientists suspect link between cat feces, female suicide

"Women infected with a parasite spread by cat feces run a higher risk of attempting suicide, suggests a study of more than 45,000 women in Denmark published in a scientific journal this week. (AFP Photo/Karen Bleier)" title

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Former NFL star Junior Seau dies in apparent suicide

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Mike Wallace's Battle With Depression and Suicide

At his lowest and most desperate, a bottle of pills and a suicide note seemed like the only answer for the legendary journalist Mike Wallace.

While the CBS 60 Minutes correspondent could make some of the most powerful leaders in the world sweat with nervousness, Wallace will also be remembered as a voice and face for those who have suffered in silence with depression and other mental illnesses.

During a candid interview with psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein in 2009, Wallace said his first major bout of depression was triggered in 1984 after U.S. Army General William C. Westmoreland sued Wallace for libel. Westmoreland was featured in the CBS documentary, “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception,” in 1982, and Wallace was the chief correspondent for the investigative report.

“I was on trial for my life,” Wallace told Borenstein.

The public humiliation and questions of integrity made him feel “dead inside,” Wallace wrote in January 2002 in an article for Guideposts. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep and took sleeping pills in an attempt to get some shuteye. Even after revealing to a family doctor that he worried about his mental state, Wallace said the doctor told him, “You’re a tough guy. You’ll get through it.”

When Wallace’s wife Mary asked whether her husband could be suffering from clinical depression, the doctor reportedly told the couple, “Forget the word depression because that’ll be bad for your image.”

But depression consumed him. Wallace described his rock bottom point, when he attempted suicide. “‘I have to get out of here,’ so I took a bunch of sleeping pills, wrote a note and ate them, and as a result, I fell asleep,” he said.

Mary found him unconscious in bed  around 3 a.m. Doctors were able to pump his stomach and revive the journalist before undergoing psychological treatment.

In Guidepost, Wallace wrote of his life post-suicide. “Before the new year, I was admitted to the hospital, ‘suffering from exhaustion,’ a CBS spokesman announced.”

Talk therapy and antidepressant medications pulled Wallace through the severe bout of depression in the mid-1980s. While he admittedly had suffered a few more episodes since then, treatments allowed for better coping methods in the years after his suicide attempt.

When asked what advice he had for those suffering from depression, Wallace said, find a “good psychiatrist.”

“You’re not a nutcase if you want to go see a psychiatrist.”

About 17 million Americans will suffer from depression at some point in their lives and according to the World Health Organization, about 5.8 percent of men and 9.5 percent of women worldwide will experience a depressive episode in any given year. Symptoms of depression include changes in sleep and appetite, inability to enjoy oneself and thoughts of hurting oneself.

Wallace acknowledged that the stigma of mental illness left many people, including himself, undiagnosed and untreated. While awareness and advocacy has curbed some of that taboo, there is still work to be done to remedy such perception.

“Until very recently, individuals in positions of power, influence, and authority went to great lengths to hide their mental illness, such as depression, out of fear that the stigma associated with the illness might negatively impact their careers,” said Dr. Amir Afkhami, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavior sciences at George Washington University. “However the illness also allowed Wallace to have a familiarity with despair that allowed him to have empathy and a deep sense of connection with victims of injustice.  This came across in his interviews during his tenure on 60 minutes and his work as a producer.”

Experts say any time a public figure like  Wallace opens up a discussion about mental illness, it makes it easier for others who may be suffering in silence from the disease.

“What Mike Wallace did by his willingness to talk about his depressive illness was extraordinary,” said Dr. Carol Bernstein, associate professor psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine. “That kind of openness with something that is usually shunned avoided and stigmatized in our society was very brave and courageous of him.

If more people of his stature came out and were willing to talk about these disorder, it would go a far way in helping to get past the stigma of this disease,” said Bernstein.

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Suicide rates rising among Canadian girls: study

Reuters – 15 hrs ago (Reuters) - Suicide rates for female teens and pre-teens in Canada rose over the past few decades even though the overall number of youths who took their own lives was dropping, according to a Canadian study that covered nearly 30 years.

Researchers whose findings were published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal also noted a change in the preferred methods of suicide, from guns or poisons to suffocation by strangulation.

"Our message is that all suicide is a tragedy and the trend is very disturbing," said lead author Robin Skinner, an epidemiologist with the Public Health Agency of Canada in Ottawa.

In 1980, 0.6 per 100,000 girls between the ages of 10 to 14 committed suicide, rising to 0.9 per 100,000 in 2008. But among girls 15 to 19 years old, the rate rose from 3.7 per 100,000 in 1980 to 6.2 per 100,000 in 2008.

Overall, suicide is the second leading cause of death for Canadians between 10 and 19 years old, after accidents.

Skinner told Reuters Health there was a small improvement in suicide rates for all Canadians in that age group between 1980 and 2008.

Whereas 6.2 of every 100,000 young Canadians killed themselves in 1980, the rate fell to 5.2 per 100,000 in 2008 -- in general, a 1 percent annual decline over nearly three decades.

The group found there was no significant change in the suicide rate for boys 10 to 14 years old. In 2008, 1.6 per 100,000 committed suicide. But the rate for those aged 15 to 19 fell considerably, from 19 per 100,000 in 1980 to 6.2 per 100,000 in 2008.

The study did not examine why the rates for girls increased over the 28-year period, or why that of boys dropped, but they did point out a steady rise among both sexes in deaths by suffocation.

Previous research has found that young people perceive hanging to be a "clean, quick and painless method" of suicide, according to the authors.

In addition, they write, a so-called "hocking game" has grown in popularity among kids and teens during the study period. It involves either strangling the throat or applying pressure to the chest to achieve euphoria from oxygen deprivation.

"The 'game' can turn deadly if the participant being choked is physiologically susceptible or if the pressure is not released quickly enough after the loss of consciousness," Skinner's team wrote.

"Deaths resulting from the 'choking game' have the potential to be misclassified as suicides, especially when the 'game' is played alone."

A commentary by Laurence Kirmayer, of the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal, that accompanied the study suggested the increase in suicides among girls might be explained by the more lethal methods being used to attempt suicide in general.

"Girls tended to use poisoning not gunshots, hanging is potentially more lethal than poisoning, partly because people often use sublethal doses of pills or other substances," he told Reuters Health in an email. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/HdqVhu and http://bit.ly/Hj1ugM

(Reporting from New York by Andrew Seaman at Reuters Health; Editing by Elaine Lies and Paul Tait)

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Suicide, heart attack risk soars on cancer diagnosis: study

"Participants attend an Avon Walk For Breast Cancer in 2011 in New York City. People diagnosed with cancer have a sharply higher risk of suicide and fatal heart attacks immediately after receiving their diagnosis, a Swedish study published on Thursday shows. (AFP Photo/Dimitrios Kambouris)" title

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Cancer Diagnosis May Raise Odds for Suicide, Heart Attack Death

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