Providentia

Anti-Gay Violence Surging in Russia

Ever since the passage of the controversial new law banning homosexual "propaganda", the upsurge in anti-LGBT violence, apparently with cooperation from the Russian government, is endangering the safety of those few protestors courageous enough to speak out.   The law, which passed unanimously in the Russian Duma on June 11, is based on  legislation already in place in cities such as St. Petersburg and extends it to the entire country.   While not banning homosexuality outright (it was decriminalized in 1993), the law imposes fines on anyone providing "propaganda on non-traditional sexual relations" to minors.  Not only is it now illegal to speak openly about gays and lesbians to young people, but any public demonstrations, including Gay Pride marches, are now banned as well.   News kiosks are also refusing to carry magazines with gay content and even gay-positive posts on Twitter and Facebook have come under attack as well.

While Gay Pride events in Russia have typically been marked by violence ever since the first Moscow Pride event in 2006,  the rise in anti-gay attacks has received little mention in the Russian news media.   Just this month alone, the deputy director of an airport in Russia's Kamchatka region was killed and his body set on fire,  reportedly because he was gay.   According to Vladimir Voloshin, the editor of Russian gay magazine Queer,   the new legislation is likely to be used as a justification to avoid prosecuting such attacks.  "It is one of the perverse consequences of the new law that criminals claim to have acted out of aversion to gays, because their lawyers assume that it will be considered as a mitigating factor during sentencing," he said.   "The worst part is, it works."

Though attacks on gay protesters typically involve ultra-Orthodox counterprotesters, there is little by way of assistance from police who are more likely to arrest pro-LGBT activists for trumped-up charges than provide protection.   There is also fear about how the new legislation will be enforced or whether something as basic as hanging a rainbow flag might be successfully prosecuted.   The fines under the new legislation are much more than the average Russian can afford, ranging from 100 to 11,700 euros (approximately $133-15000) depending on the infraction.  One recent conviction involved St. Petersburg resident, Nikolai Alexeyev who was prosecuted in May for holding up a sign saying, "Homosexuality is not a perversion."    It also means that web sites can be blocked without a court order and even reporting on anti-gay violence may be deemed criminal. 

Young activists are still fighting back though their activism is largely limited to Internet campaigns.   In one recent initiative called "The Children-404", a picture series of young LGBT Russians is shown with posters to hide their faces.  One of these posters read, "I refuse to be invisible! Love is stronger than hate."     But the hate remains deeply rooted in Russia, with the full blessing of Vladimir Putin's government.   What impact this will have on the already high suicide rate among LGBT youths is likely to be severe.   Especially since reporting on new deaths will probably be considered illegal.

For more information

May is Mental Health Awareness Month

While attitudes towards mental illness are slowly changing,  people experiencing mental health problems still face enormous stigma that can delay their recovery and prevent them from becoming reintegrated into their community.    To help improve the quality of life for the estimated one in four people living with mental illness, the month of May has been designated Mental Health Awareness Month in the United States.    First launched as Mental Health Awareness Week during the 1940s, it was later expanded to a full month during the 1960s.

The 2013 theme for Mental Health Month is Pathways to Wellness.  Among the key messages by Mental Health America as part of this broader theme are:

• Wellness is essential to living a full and productive life.  It's about keeping healthy as well as getting healthy.
• Wellness involves a set of skills and strategies that prevent the onset or shorten the duration of illness and promote recovery and well-being. Wellness is more than just the absence of disease.
• Wellness is more than an absence of disease. It involves complete general, mental and social well-being. And mental health is an essential component of overall health and well-being. The fact is our overall well-being is tied to the balance that exists between our emotional, physical, spiritual and mental health.
• Whatever our situation, we are all at risk of stress given the demands of daily life and the challenges it brings-at home, at work and in life. Steps that build and maintain well-being and help us all achieve wellness involve a balanced diet, regular exercise, enough sleep, a sense of self-worth, development of coping skills that promote resiliency, emotional awareness, and connections to family, friends and community.
• These steps should be complemented by taking stock of one's well-being through regular mental health checkups and screenings. Just as we check our blood pressure and get cancer screenings, it's a good idea to take periodic reading of our emotional well-being.
• Fully embracing the concept of wellness not only improves health in the mind, body and spirit, but also maximizes one's potential to lead a full and productive life. Using strategies that promote resiliency and strengthen mental health and prevent mental health and substance use conditions lead to improved general health and a healthier society: greater academic achievement by our children, a more productive economy, and families that stay together.

During the month of May, other mental health campaigns will be run across the United States with similar campaigns being run in Canada.    To participate in National Mental Health Month or to get further information,  check out the various resources available on the Mental Health America site including factsheets and the 2013 Media Toolkit. 

 

 

Video Campaign Underway to Fight "Untouchability"

Though numerous minorities face severe discrimination in countries around the word,  there are few  that face the extreme conditions experienced by "untouchable" Dalits in India and other parts of south-east Asia.   Though Dalits are actually a mixed population with different languages and religions, they are regarded as "untouchable"  under the traditional caste system.  As a result, Dalits are regarded as "polluting" all non-Dalits with whom they come in contact.     Not only are they forbidden any physical contact, they are also not allowed to eat when other caste members are eating, use separate utensils and drinking containers, entering other caste homes, and endure complete segregation in terms of schooling, seating, and where they can live.    They are also traditionlly banned from living inside villages to keep from "polluting" them and often forced to live in houses without basic plumbing or electricity.   Dalits are also considered bound to carry out basic "duties" such as handling corpses or other sanitation tasks deemed too "unclean" for higher castes.  

While the Indian government has banned the practice of untouchability and established new laws to protect Dalits from discrimination, that has made little difference in rural areas where Dalits face enormous prejudice.   Violence directed against Dalits remains common including a recent incident where more than one hundred Dalits were forced to flee a village in northern India after a Dalit married an upper-caste woman.  To combat anti-Dalit prejudice, an international media and human rights group has launched the Article 17 campaign to document the plight of Dalits in India and neighbouring countries.  Video Volunteers was founded in 2003 to use community media to enable citizen journalism by members of marginalized communities around the world.    Their Article 17 campaign launched in April of last year is named for Article 17 of the Indian constitution which states that:

Untouchability is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. The enforcement of any disability arising out of untouchability shall be an offence punishable in accordance with law.

In organizing the Article 17 campaign, Video Volunteers director Stalin K.  described it as the culmination of the ten years he spent documenting incidents of untouchability across India.  In his video, India Untouched, he challenged the prevailing belief that untouchability was not widely practiced in modern India.   As he describes the reaction to his video:

In the years since the making of that film, little has changed. We still receive reports of barber shops refusing to shave Dalits. Homeowners unwilling to rent their houses to Dalits. Children segregated and discriminated in schools, women not allowed to draw water from wells, families pushed out of temples. Segregated mosques, churches, even crematoriums. Pervasive violence aimed at those who challenge caste discrimination. Social and economic boycotts for those who dare to transgress caste boundaries. Newly-weds chased and killed because they chose to marry outside their own caste. Rapes. Acid attacks. The list goes on shamelessly.

The Article 17 campaign has already collected more than 30 videos describing breaches of laws against untouchability.   Along with the videos, Video Volunteers has filed a formal appeal with government agencies charged with policing violations of caste law.   Their appeal includes more than two thousand signatures pleading for action although they have received little response to date.  

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December 12 is Global Bullying Prevention Day

December 12, 2012 will mark Global Bullying Prevention Day.    Participating students, teachers  and parents are asked to commemorate the day with twelve seconds of silence at 12 PM PST.   To honour the event, California legislators have advanced Bill SRC-100 to mark 12/12/12 a Bullying Prevention Day in the state of California.    Also promoting that special day is KidsResourse.org and its founder, Gerry Orz.  

In the short film available on his website titled Day of Silence, Gerry provides the following message:   “My name is Gerry Orz, founder of a non-profit organization, Kids Resource.  I am 10 years old and I would like to ask your help in promoting my message all around the world.  I have been bullied in school for so many reasons – too tall, gay parents, parent a foreigner, too honest, too Jewish…  I refused to feel like a victim but I had the support of my mothers and a brother and my voice was HEARD.  Not everyone was so lucky…”

Bullying can take many forms, all of them ugly.   Though news stories continue to report bullied students who lash out in violence, whether in the form of suicide or through shooting rampages punishing teachers and students alike, the epidemic of bullying continues.   Whether in the form of social ostracism, online harassment, or physical/sexual abuse, the toll bullying can take can be horrendous.   And that toll hardly ends when bullied children grow up.

To read more, check out the new post on my Psychology Today blog.  

Inuit Community Groups Prepare for World Suicide Prevention Day

To call attention to a suicide rate for Canada's Inuit that is eleven times higher than in the rest of Canada, Inuit commuinity groups are planning a series of public events across the country to mark the Tenth World Suicide Prevention day on September 10.

Held on September 10 each year, World Suicide Prevention Day is intended to raise awareness of suicide and how it can be prevented.    As part of their campaign to promote World Suicide Prevention Day, the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP)  has established a special website with resources and suggested activities to promote the event and the 2012 theme is : "Suicide Prevention across the Globe: Strengthening Protective Factors and Instilling Hope."  Over the past decade, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the IASP have been using World Suicide Prevention Day to increase public awareness about suicide prevention and to reduce the stigma and the conspiracy of silence that often goes with it. 

Read more.

The Van Gogh Perspective (Part 3 of 3)

Continued from Part 2

Van Gogh's Final Days

Vincent Van Gogh had a very personal reason for visiting Paris after leaving the asylum.  Not only had he never met his sister-in-law Johanna except through her letters, he was also eager to see his new nephew for the first time.   Although he and Johanna had been exchanging letters since her marriage to Theo, the meeting was important for both of them.  She would later write that "I had expected a sick man but here was a sturdy, broad-shouldered man, with a healthy colour, a smile on his face, and a very resolute appearance."  Van Gogh in turn described Johanna as "charming and very simple and nice".   Despite being with his family, Van Gogh was disturbed by "the noise and bustle" of Paris and was afraid of having a relapse.  

By May, 1890, he had left Paris and was safely settled in nearby Auvers-sur-Oise.  Now a suburb of Paris, the peaceful commune was a favourite hangout for artists.    In deciding that he should live there, Theo Van Gogh had arranged for his brother to say in the home of a homeopathic doctor and psychiatrist named Paul Gachet.   Since Dr. Gachet was an amateur painter himself, the Van Gogh brothers had decided that he would be the ideal doctor to oversee Vincent's recovery and allow him to continue his painting.   

Despite having numerous artists as patients (including August Renoir and Edouard Cezanne), Dr. Gachet had his own eccentricities and Van Gogh had problems with the treatment he received.  Van Gough eventually concluded that Dr. Gachet was "sicker than I am, I think, or shall we say just as much."    Although the doctor was full of advice on how his patient could recover (including giving up alcohol and smoking), Van Gogh refused to follow it    

If Van Gogh had been optimistic before coming to Auvers-sur-Oise, his misgivings about Dr. Gachet's treatment likely made him more depressed than ever.  Along with his depression, he also seemed more apprehensive about his condition getting worse.  Although Van Gogh's time there was one of his most productive periods with many fine works being produced (including a portrait of Dr. Gachet and his daughter), his letters to Theo were filled with concerns about his future prospects.  Theo in turn was worried about his brother as well as his own career as an art dealer. 

Despite hints that Van Gogh was slowly growing worse, what happened on July 27, 1890 took everyone by surprise.   After the sound of a shot was heard behind the Auberge Ravoux where he had been staying as a lodger, a severely wounded Vincent Van Gogh  stumbled into the chateau.   While his condition appeared to be stabilized at first (he was even smoking a pipe at one point),  he eventually slipped into a coma.  

According to medical sources, the attending physician underestimated how serious the wound was and made no attempt to remove the bullet.   Theo, summoned from Paris by an urgent telegram from Dr. Gachet, managed to arrive in time to have his brother die in his arms.  While no gun was ever found, there seemed little doubt that his death was a suicide. 

In describing Vincent's death, Johanna later wrote  that "Fear of the illness that was threatening him once again, or an actual attack drove him to his death."   Although Paul Gachet faced considerable criticism over his patient's suicide just ten weeks after treatment began, he defended himself by pointing out that Vincent failed to follow much of the actual advice that he had been given.   Vincent was buried in Auvers-sur-Oise.

The Aftermath

And Vincent Van Gogh wasn't the only casualty.   Theo, grieving over his brother's death and guilt-stricken over being able to prevent the suicide, developed serious medical problems of his own.   His health had already been poor and he never recovered from the shock of losing Vincent.   Just a month after settling Vincent's last will and testament (he was the executor), Theo began experiencing severe headaches and mood swings as well as terrible nightmares.  

He quit his job and eventually broke down completely by the middle of October when he was admitted to a Paris clinic with a possible stroke.   His condition worsened and Johanna took him home to the Netherlands where he died on January 25, 1891.  He was only 33 years old. 

Although the official cause of death was dementia paralytica (possibly syphilis-related), the emotional trauma of his brother's suicide likely played a major role.  While he was first buried in his native country, Theo's body was exhumed in 1914 and
buried next to his brother in France. 

As for Johanna, although she later remarried, she continued to act as a major driving force in promoting the memory of Vincent and Theo Van Gogh until her own death in 1925. 

Already praised for his amazing art during his lifetime, Van Gogh's reputation grew steadily after his death.    The extensive collection of letters that he wrote were first published in annotated form by Johanna in 1913.   Along with providing a compelling look at the lifelong friendship between Vincent and Theo,  the letters also show Vincent's  relationship with some of the most famous artists of his time (including Paul Gauguin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec) and the emotional support that he depended on for so long.   Although the letters were originally undated, careful work by Van Gogh's various biographers, as well as historians associated with the Van Gogh Museum have made the letters an imp0rtant resource for art historians and psychologists alike.

The letters may be a good resource for people coping with mental illness as well.   Despite his tragic death, Vincent Van Gogh coped successfully with his mental illness for many years with the help of caring family members.    The symptoms that Vincent carefully described in his letters are ones that many people with psychiatric problems need to wrestle with on a daily basis.  His sad fate also demonstrates the need for prompt intervention and a good relationship between patients and their caregivers.  

Would Vincent have been as great an artist with modern medical treatment available (including medication)?  Could he have lived longer and provided the world with even more amazing paintings?  Some questions can never be answered.

 

 

The Van Gogh Perspective (Part 2 of 3)

Continued from Part 1

From Hospital to Asylum

 Although he was was formally discharged from hospital on February 17, Vincent Van Gogh's problems were hardly over.   As far as the good people of Arles were concerned, the artist was dangerously insane and a public petition asked the mayor to have him locked in an isolation cell for a month.   The Yellow House where he and Gauguin had lived was sealed by police and he was banned from returning.  In bringing Theo up to date on what was happening, Van Gogh had to reassure him in a letter that "As far as I can judge, I am not really mad."   His artist friends continued to visit and they even went to the Yellow House together to make fun of the police on guard.   Van Gogh also began painting again although he was afraid of setting up a new studio on his own.  He  and his brother began discussing his going to a nearby asylum as a precaution and he was realistic as her evaluated his condition.  As he wrote to Theo, "What comforts me is that I am beginning to look on madness as a disease like  any other and to accept it as such".     

 Becoming more used to the fixed hospital routine, Van Gogh became increasingly afraid of reentering the world (a common problem with psychiatric patients facing release).  Along with the stigma attached to his mental illness, he also reported feeling "crushed by guilt and inadequacy" and hints of suicidal thoughts, which were nothing new to him, became more frequent in his writing.   He was also worried about money despite Theo reassuring him that his business as an art dealer was going well.  At one point, Vincent even suggested enlisting in the Foreign Legion (yes, people actually did that back then although Theo quashed this idea).    By late 1889, Van Gogh left Arles for the last time and went to the St  Paul de Mausole asylum in nearby Saint-Remy.  As he explained in a letter to his sister, Wil, "In all, I have had 4 major attacks, during which I had no idea what I asid, what I wanted or what I did, not to mention the three times before when I had fainting fits for inexplicable reasons, being quite unable to recall what I felt at that time".   

Life in the Asylum

Even as a patient, Van Gogh kept up his painting.  Along with sending him painting equipment, Theo kept his brother informed on what was happening in the Paris artist community and which of his paintings he would be entering in art exhibitions.   Although Van Gogh's doctor limited his freedom of movement at first, that changed as staff became more confident that there would be no more self-harm incidents.   Vincent also studied his fellow mental patients with keen interest and wrote to Theo that "my fear of madness is wearing off markedly, since I can see at close quarters those who are affected by in the same way that I may very easily be in the future...  For though there are some who howl and rave a great deal, there is much true friendship here.  They say we must tolerate others so that others may tolerate us, and other very sound arguments, which they put into practice too.  And we understand each other very well.  Sometimes for instance, I can talk with one of them - who can only reply in incoherent sound - because he is not afraid of me". 

He was also a keen observer of his mental processes before and after his psychotic episodes and carefully documented these changes in his letters (the equivalent of blogging back then).   As he commented in a letter to Theo, "Again- speaking of my condition- I am so grateful for yet another thing.  I've noticed that others, too, hear sounds and strange voices during their attacks, as I did, and that things seemed to change before their very eyes.  And that lessened the horror with which I remembered my first attack, something that, when it comes on you unexpectedly, cannot but frighten you terribly.  Once you know it is part of the illness, you accept it like anything else.  Had I not seen other lunatics close to, I should not have been able to stop myself from thinking about it all the time.  For the suffering and the anguish are not funny when you are having the attack...I like to think that once you know what it is, once you are conscious of your condition, and of being subject to attacks, then you can do something to prevent your being taken unawares by the anguish or the terror.  Now that it has been abating for five months I have high hopes of getting over it, or at least of no longer having such violent attacks."

Though restricted to the hospital grounds (with supervised visits to the local countryside), Vincent managed to continue his painting and Theo's letters were full of praise for the quality of his work.   In one letter, he praised Vincent for "conveying the quintessence of your thoughs about nature and living beings, which , you feel are so closely bound up in them.  But how that brain of yours must have laboured, and how you have risked everything in venturing to the very brink, where vertigo is inevitable."   Theo wasn't the only one to recognize the genius of his brother's work.   The time Van Gogh spent in hospital marked some of his most amazing artwork, including The Reaper, Cypresses, and his best-known painting, The Starry Night (later the title of a Don Henley song about his life).    

Despite a psychotic attack in mid-July that threatened to delay his release from hospital,  Van Gogh slowly improved.   His doctors had misgivings about his recovery though.  According to one doctor who privately reported to Theo, "his suicidal tendencies have gone, the only thing that still troubles him is having unpleasant dreams."    There was also the question of where Vincent could go after his release.  While he wanted to go north to continue his painting, he hesitated since "there are so many people there".   This recovery was delayed further by a serious attack in December, 1889, almost a full year after the Arles episode.   Since he tried to commit suicide by swallowing paint, his doctors restricted his painting and confined him to drawing instead. 

Once he had recovered enough to write to Theo and Johanna again, Vincent described himself as feeling "like a broken vessel".    Despite further setbacks, Vincent was cheered by the birth of a nephew (named "Vincent" in his honour).   Despite serious epileptic seizures and more setbacks to his recovery, Vincent Van Gogh kept up his painting and his correspondence with friends and family.    There were also long silences during which he didn't write at all and Theo noted sadly, in a letter to him on April 23, 1890, that "your silence is proof that you are not yet well."   Van Gogh did his best to reassure Theo and finally left the asylum to travel to Paris. 

To be continued

 

 

The Fruit Machine Saga (Part 3)

Continued from Part 2

After the Fruit Machine

Even as early as 1967, changes in Canadian society made the RCMP's crusade against homosexuals harder than ever.   Despite a formal partnership with the morality divisions of city police forces (which allowed them to threaten suspects with arrest for failing to name fellow homosexuals),  the improving legal situation for gay men and lesbians made the paranoia surrounding homosexuals in the  public service harder to justify.  Along with the passage of the 1967 Sexual Offenses Act in the U.K. (which effectively decriminalized homsexuality) and the fight to decriminalize homosexuality in Canada.   Then Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau defended decriminalization with his famous line that "there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation".   Canada's Criminal Law Amendment Act was finally passed in 1969 despite a massive anti-gay campaign by conservative and religious groups and allegations that the new law was motivated by "communism, socialism, and atheism".   While the situation was slowly improving for sexual minorities in Canada, attitudes in the public service were slow to change and many gay men and lesbians were still fired for being "not advantageously employable".  Even as recently as 1992, Michelle Douglas' firing for being a lesbian led to the groundbreaking legal decision removing the ban on homosexuals openly serving in the Canadian military .    Virtually all government documents outlining the anti-gay security campaign, as well as the fruit machine project vanished into government archives until the Associated Press forced their release in the 1990s.  Despite Canada's reputation as being a liberal country,  it's still hard to estimate how many thousands of lives were ruined by the RCMP's security campaign.   As Gary Kinsman poand Patrizia Gentile pointed out in their gripping book, The Canadian War on Queers, it was the national security campaign that likely spurred the growth of the gay liberation movement in Canada.  

While F. Robert Wake died in 1993 (with obituaries carefully avoiding any mention of his security work), that was hardly the end of the quest to build a successful "fruit machine".   Ironically, a far better approach to measuring sexual arousal became widely available in Canada when Dr. Kurt Freund arrived in 1968 to begin a new position at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry (now the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health).   Through the penile plethysmograph technique he pioneered in Europe, Dr. Freund created the first practical method for detecting sexual interest in males by measuring bloodflow to the penis.   Although he had initially been commissioned to develop the test by the Czech military to weed out homosexuals in the military, Dr. Freund's early research in aversive conditioning led him to conclude that homosexuals could not be "cured" in this fashion and called for the decriminalization of homosexuality in Czechoslovakia.    After coming to Canada as a refugee in 1968, he successfully resisted any attempt to use his penile plethysmography technique to identify homosexuals in Canada and pushed for decriminalization instead.  While this won him few friends in the largely Freudian psychiatric community of that time, his laboratory became one of the first in the world to use penile plethysmography (now more commonly known as phallometry)  to detect sexual arousal in men accused of pedophilia and related sexual offenses. 

Although Dr. Freund opposed attempts to use his phallometry technique to detect homosexual men during his lifetime, reports have surfaced of phallometric testing of homosexuals have surfaced in other countries (including Dr. Freund's birthplace, the Czech Republic).   As recently as last year, the European Union Commission issued a statement declaring the Czech Republic's ongoing use of sexual arousal tests on gay asylum seekers to be in direct violation of EU asylum laws.  In citing several recent cases of gay refugees being forced to undergo phallometry as part of their application for asylum in the Czech Republic, the EU's Fndamental Rights Agency has flagged the Czech Republic for being the only country in Europe to demand such testing for refugees.

Despite the Czech Republic coming under the spotlight due to being part of the European Union, the use of phallometry and other tests of sexual arousal in non-European countries is not so well documented.  Given that homosexuality is still a criminal offense in numerous countries around the world, using widely available sexual arousal testing to identify and prosecute homosexual men and women may well be far more prevalent than anyone realizes.

Perhaps the "fruit machine" saga isn't quite over yet.

 

Losing Hope

African American youths from single mother homes are more likely to live in neighborhoods characterized by greater risk and fewer resources than youth from two parent homes or European American youths; in turn, such adverse conditions are associated with increased adjustment problems. Despite this well-established vulnerability, relatively little is known about variables linking neighborhood context to youth adjustment. With the aim of identifying a potential youth-focused intervening variable amenable to intervention, a study published in a recent issue of Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology examined the intervening role of hopelessness in the association between neighborhood context and adjustment problems in a sample of 171 African American youths (11–16 year olds) from single mother homes. Findings revealed direct associations between neighborhood context and youth adjustment, as well as indirect associations through youth hopelessness, although findings varied by the marker of neighborhood context (sense of community or perceived crime) and adjustment (internalizing or externalizing problems). Building on prior work noting that hopelessness is amenable to psychosocial intervention, the present findings suggest that hopelessness may afford a valuable target for prevention and intervention programming among African American youths from single mother homes in the context of adverse neighborhood conditions.

For the abstract.

Linking Obesity to Suicide

Approximately 10% of severely obese bariatric-surgery-seeking individuals report a lifetime history of suicide attempts, a higher rate than in the general community. Being overweight is associated with weight-related stigma, making an individual more vulnerable to social isolation, a potential risk factor for suicidal ideation and/or behavior. A recent issue of Crisis:  The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention presents a cross-sectional study of surgery-seeking adults with severe obesity examining whether weight-related stigma increases (1) the likelihood of suicidal ideation and/or behavior or (2) the degree of loneliness; and whether hypotheses (1) and (2) are supported (3) if loneliness mediates the effect of weight-related stigma on suicidal ideation and/or behavior. Online questionnaires were administered to 301 women and 95 men seeking bariatric surgery. Results showed that approximately 30.3% reported having at least a passing thought of suicide, and 5.55% a suicide attempt during their lifetime. The suicide attempt rate appears lower than other bariatric surgery samples, but possibly higher than community and other surgery sample rates. For severely obese surgery-seeking women, weight-related stigma was associated with suicidal ideation and/or behavior, though this was not mediated by loneliness. Conclusions: Future studies are needed to model and compare suicidal ideation and/or behavior in bariatric-surgery-seeking individuals and control groups.

For the abstract.