Providentia

The effectiveness of positivism training on suicide ideation and death anxiety in the elderly.

Aging appears to be a biological process experienced by all living beings including humans. Hence, it seems crucial to pay particular attention to the elderly and prevent disorders such as suicide ideation and death anxiety among them. A new study in the journal Aging Psychology explored the effectiveness of positivism training on suicide ideation and death anxiety in the elderly. It was a quasi-experimental study with pretest-posttest and control group design. The statistical population included all the elderly men living in Dezful, Iran in 2020. The sample consisted of 30 elderly men (60 to 70 years old) selected using the convenience sampling method and considering the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The experimental group underwent eight 90-minute weekly sessions. Applied in the study were the Beck’s suicide ideation scale and Collet–Lester’s fear of death scale. Data were analyzed using univariate analysis in SPSS-22 software. The results indicated that there is a significant difference between experimental and control groups in terms of suicide ideation and death anxiety in the posttest (P<.001). That is, the positivism training resulted in the deacres of suicide ideation and death anxiety. According to the findings of the present study, the positivism training can be suggested as an efficient method in the reduction of suicide ideation and death anxiety in the elderly men. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

 

Do Winning Sports Teams Reduce Suicide?

Issues related to professional sport transcend far beyond the world of sport itself. Previous research on the topic of sport and suicide has found that a significant association exists between the success of professional sport teams and the well-being of people in general. In a recent study in The Sociological Quarterly, suicide rates in United States’ metropolitan areas were analyzed from 2006 to 2007 and from 2009 to 2010 to measure the association between suicide rates and the success of professional sport teams in these same metropolitan areas. Results from statistical analyses reveal that the successes of professional sport teams are significantly related to lower suicide rates, while the only game in town hypothesis was not supported. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

 

 

The Strange Death of James Moon

Despite being one of Lafayette, Indiana's most well-known landmarks and the site of that city's first hotel, the Lahr House Hotel has another claim to fame which is far more macabre.

When a guest named James Moon first checked into the hotel on June 10, 1876, nobody paid much notice despite the rather large and bulky trunk he had with him.  While living with his wife and six children on a farm in a nearby Quaker community, the 37-year-old Moon still traveled into Lafayette often enough to be fairly well-known to  staff from his previous stays at the hotel.    He also had a reputation of being an inventor and all-around "jack-of-all-trades" so nobody thought much about the trunk itself.    On checking in, however,  he asked hotel staff for a quiet room as he was a light sleeper who didn't wish to be disturbed.   After hearing some suggestions, Moon decided on a third-floor room located to the rear of the building and stated that he would only need it for a few days.   

After settling in his room, Moon then left to run several errands in the city.   Though he mostly kept to himself, he did mention in passing to one of the hotel's owners that he was working on "perfecting a patent of considerable importance."     What nobody knew at the time was that, during the course of his errands in the city, he bought a large ax-head at a nearby hardware store two thick iron plates at a foundry.   At that same foundry, he instructed staff to bore holes through the ax head and the plates and stated that they would be part of a machine he was building for creating "fruit baskets".    While  this foundry work was being done, he went to a barber shop and had his heavy beard shaved off and then stopped at a drug store and bought cotton padding and chloroform (it was a simpler time back then).   

Finally, he picked up his order from the foundry and placed his purchases in the heavy trunk which was still on his carriage.    After paying a visit to several of his comrades from his days fighting in the Civil War, Moon then returned to the hotel where he arranged for his trunk to be brought up to his room.  Despite being well over six feet tall and weighing close to 200 pounds, the trunk was still too heavy for Moon to carry himself  and he needed help from two baggage handlers to lug the trunk up to the third floor.   With that final chore taken care of, Moon then locked the door.   

On Sunday, June 11, a maid named Bridget Clogan tried several times during the day to enter Moon's room for cleaning but got no response.   At 5 pm, she tried once more and, getting no answer, she used her passkey to enter the room.   What she saw there sent her into a fit of screaming that alarmed all the guests in nearby rooms.  Two of these guests rushed to her assistance and found Moon's decapitated body strapped to the floor with his head lying nearby.   What he had passed off as a machine for making fruit baskets was actually a crude guillotine which he had used to cut off his own head in one of the most bizarre suicides on record.   

Hotel staff  called the police who then began examining the crime scene in elaborate detail.   He had apparently been carrying the disassembled pieces of the guillotine in his trunk and, once he got the ax head and metal plates needed to complete his device, had carefully assembled the device in the hotel room.  Moon's contraption basically consisted of a broadax attached to a jointed wooden arm that swung on a hinge screwed into the floor.   The ax head had two thick wooden bars which were bolted together to provide a counterweight.    But Moon's ingenuity didn't end there.   He also prepared a soapbox to hold his head secure and placed a large wooden block under his neck to ensure that the blade would make a solid hit.  He had then carefully fastened a cord to the wooden arm and attached the other end to the windowsill.   All that remained was for Moon to set a candle holder by the window with the flame being lit so that it would burn through the cord.    This allowed Moon enough time to get his head in position and wait for the cord to be burned all the way through.   It was a testament to Moon's ingenuity that this bizarre suicide method worked on his first try.

Since Moon failed to leave behind a suicide note, police were baffled over his motives for killing himself in such a bizarre fashion.  All that they could determine was that he had been dead for about ten hours before his body was discovered which put the time of death around 7:00 am on Sunday.    The body was moved to a nearby funeral home and his widow, Mary, came up with several relatives to make arrangements to ship the body home (no word on how long it took hotel staff to clean up the room to prepare it for the next guest).   

As you might expect,  stories about Moon's bizarre suicide were carried by newspapers across the country.    Most of the coverage on the story came from the local paper in Lafayette which also provided further details about Moon's life.  This included his being a self-taught blacksmith and his various attempts at creating a perpetual motion machine.   But most of the details that we know about James Moon came from the coroner's inquest and the various people who provided testimony about the deceased inventor.   

Many of the witnesses called were former neighbours who described Moon as a well-educated man who was kind to his family. Being the son of a Quaker minister, it was likely no surprise that he was thoroughly familiar with the Bible though, intriguingly enough, he was also a bit of an atheist.    Other people who knew Moon also described his fascination with machines for causing death.   One of these neighbours, O.W. Phillips, testified that Moon had  told him back in 1875 that he could "make a better machine that could take life than has yet been invented."   To nobody's surprise, the jury returned a verdict of suicide though the reason he chose to kill himself they way he did died with him.

James Moon was buried in the Farmer's Institute Cemetery, not far from his farm.  As for the guillotine used to kill Moon, that went on display at a site not far from the hotel where the bizarre death took place.  Thousands of men, women, and children came to see the device before it was finally disassembled.  Photographs of the bizarre apparatus can still be found online.

Trends and disparities in suicidal behaviors for heterosexual and sexual minority youth 1995–2017.

The current study examines disparities and longitudinal trends of suicidal behaviors among sexual minority youth disaggregated by self-reported sex and sexual orientation. Despite evidence that attitudes toward sexual minorities have improved during recent decades, few studies have examined whether suicidal behaviors in youth of varying sexual minority identities have likewise improved. Using population-based data from Massachusetts, a study published in the journal Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity,conducted a series of logistic regression analyses to examine disparities and trends for suicidal ideation (SI), suicide attempt (SA), and suicide attempt resulting in medical treatment (SM) by sexual minority and heterosexual youth during four cohort periods ranging from 1995 to 2017. Results found that the overall prevalence of suicidal behavior has decreased over time for all groups. However, there were significant disparities between sexual minority and heterosexual groups for all suicidal behaviors across cohorts. Sexual minority groups ranged from being 1.28 times to 15.45 times more likely to engage in suicidal behavior as heterosexual peers within a cohort period. During the most recent cohort period (2013 to 2017), the rates for SI and SA across sexual minorities ranged from three to seven times that of heterosexual peers. The gap for SI and SA widened across time for almost all female sexual minority groups. The gap for SA and SM narrowed for all male sexual minorities but varied across groups for SI. These results indicate that despite societal improvement in acceptance of sexual minorities, sexual minority youth continue to be at higher risk for suicidal behavior, particularly females for whom most disparities increased over time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

Does Team Spirit Prevent Suicide?

Issues related to professional sport transcend far beyond the world of sport itself. Previous research on the topic of sport and suicide has found that a significant association exists between the success of professional sport teams and the well-being of people in general. A new study published in The Sociological Quarterly examines suicide rates in United States’ metropolitan areas from 2006 to 2007 and from 2009 to 2010 to measure the association between suicide rates and the success of professional sport teams in these same metropolitan areas. Results from statistical analyses reveal that the successes of professional sport teams are significantly related to lower suicide rates, while the only game in town hypothesis was not supported. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract.

The Volcano Suicides

It all began on February 11, 1933, when a 21-year old student named Kiyoko Matsumoto committed suicide by throwing herself into the volcanic crater of Mount Mihara on the Japanese island of Izu Oshima.   

Matsumoto, a student at Tokyo's Jissan College,  had developed an infatuation with fellow student Masako Tomita.  In a poignant letter, she wrote, "Dearest, I am bewildered to distraction by the perplexities of maturing womanhood. I can stand the strain no longer. What shall I do? I should like to jump into a volcano."   As it happened, Tomita knew just the ideal spot for such a romantic gesture.  Since lesbian relationships were considered taboo in Japanese culture at the time, both she and Tomita decided to travel together to the volcano so that Matsumoto could end her life there.  

Mount Mihara was already a well-known suicide site since an observation post near the top of the volcanic cone allowed visitors to look straight down into the crater.  Even as early as the 1920s, people could commit suicide by jumping into the volcano.  Such incidents were relatively rare, though, since there were more practical alternatives, including jumping off one of Tokyo's skyscrapers.  Unfortunately for Matsumoto, business owners had recently stopped high-rise suicides by placing security barriers at the top of those buildings where suicides had taken place.   Though determined jumpers could still find accessible buildings, Masako Tomito telling all her friends at school about Matsumoto's death would establish Mount Mihara as a new suicide venue.  

Along with the poignant goodbye note she left behind, the story of a young woman ending her life by jumping into a volcano became a media sensation across Japan as news agencies picked up the story and made Matsumoto a celebrity.    Her goodbye note was reprinted in the newspapers, and Mount Mihara suddenly attracted a new wave of tourists and curiosity seekers.   According to a Times news article from 1935, Masako Tomita also became a celebrity and died not long afterward (cause of death was not given).   

To profit from the volcano's new popularity,  Jinnojo Hayashi, president of Tokyo Bay Steamship Company, set up a daily steamship line to the island, and the observation post near the top of the mountain picked up the new name: "Suicide Point."   Visitors wishing to visit the volcano could ride donkeys and horses up the steep mountain to look into the lava for themselves.   The poor fishing community at the foot of the volcano also prospered with the new tourist trade.   Though authorities were already becoming alarmed by this new craze, they did little to discourage it at first (suicide was not illegal under Japanese law).   In 1933 alone, 944 people (804 men, 140 women) would jump into the crater.   The two years that followed saw an additional 350 suicides and 1386 attempted suicides on Mount Mihara, and visitors would often travel there to watch people jump.

Newspapers also played on Kiyoko Matsumoto's sexual orientation, and "lesbian suicide" became a new cultural meme in Japan.   Even before Matsumoto's death, suicide was hardly uncommon in women facing problems coming to terms with their sexuality. For lesbians in particular,  living in a country with little tolerance for sexual minorities provided few options except for suffering in silence.    The rise in suicides among women was alarming enough for Nobuko Jo of the Old Women's Home in Kobe, Japan, to establish a national movement designed to prevent further deaths.   She helped set up shelters which she called "Wait-a-bits" where people would reconsider killing themselves.   "The pause for reflection is vital," she said in one public statement, "Achieve that, and the unfortunate woman generally saves herself. The thing is to ease their hysteria, if only for a few hours, and get them away from hysterical friends."   Along with Wait-a-bits, she also established shelters for homeless women across Japan and credited her movement with preventing thousands of deaths. 

The romantic aspect of Matsumoto's death caused Mount Mihara to become a popular spot for mutual suicide pacts (known as shinjuu in Japan).   Until the outbreak of World War 2, as many as 45 couples would commit suicide each year by throwing themselves into the volcano.   In one shinjuu case from 1956,  27-year old Fumisuke Onodera and 21-year old Chieko Numakura of Tokyo decided on suicide after learning of Numakura's bone tuberculosis.   Though they both jumped into the volcano, they actually landed on a ledge about ten meters (30 feet) above the lava.   After reconsidering their suicide decision, Onodera tried to climb out with Numakura on his back though he could not manage to get her out alone.  He eventually made it to the top by himself and arranged for her rescue.   Though badly burned, they both survived.

The Mount Mihara suicide epidemic eventually ended through enhanced security to prevent suicides and by making it a criminal offense to purchase a one-way ticket.  While suicide is likely still possible for someone sufficiently determined, there are usually more accessible places available.   Even today, suicide in Japan remains a major social issue, and the suicide rate is one of the highest in the world.   Methods tend to vary (and certain places such as Japan's Aokigahara Forest remain popular), so authorities stay alert to the possibility of copycat suicides following high-profile deaths.   In recent years, the suicides of musicians Yukiko Okada and hide triggered small copycat suicide clusters, although nothing on the scale following Kiyoko Matsumoto's death.  

Still, the rapid rise of suicides in Japan during the 1990s (1998 saw a 34.7% increase from the previous year) and the number of suicides linked to the recent economic downturn has led to a call for stronger action.   A new government initiative has been put into place to reduce suicides by 20% by 2017, with billions of yen being allocated for anti-suicide measures, including greater access to counseling.   Though early signs are encouraging, the popularity of internet suicide websites listing different ways of committing suicide using household chemicals demonstrates that the suicide epidemic is far from over.

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Indian Woman Attempts Suicide Following Sexual Assault by "Witchdoctor"

Police in the Indian state of Gujurat are investigating after a complaint was laid against a man described as a "witch doctor" by a woman alleging that he had sexually assaulted her repeatedly as well as blackmailing her and assaulting one of her relatives.   The woman, who can not be named publicly due to Supreme Court guidelines protecting sexual assault victims,  is a 29-year-old pharmacist living in the Gujurat city of Amedabad.  She stated that she first approached the man, the accused, Anand Vaghela, two years ago after her husband left her.   Vaghela, who had been introduced to her by a cousin, then promised that he could help her with "tantric rituals" that would ensure her husband's return to her.   

While carrying out the rituals, she then began chatting with Vaghela  on WhatsApp after which he allegedly took her to different hotels in the city where he repeatedly raped her and, after taping the abuse  with his mobile phone, blackmailed her in to paying Rs 2.50 lakh (approximately 2,311.50 in U.S. dollars).   When she attempted to avoid him, he then began stalking and harassing her and even threatened to kill her family.   As part of his intimidation campaign, she also attacked her brother a year ago though no arrest was made at the time.   The harassment led to her attempting suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills she obtained at work.   While she survived the attempt, it led to her being hospitalized on March 5 and she then filed the complaint.  

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Is a Tik Tok Video Responsible for the Death of a Saskatchewan Youth?

"He was just always a busy kid, and was since the day he was born," she said.  "He was always just doing his thing, playing music, [a] really happy kid."

When Melanie Anderson heard unusual sounds coming from the bedroom of her 13-year-old son, Cash, she didn't investigate it immediately as she felt that her son wanted privacy.   It was only when she went upstairs an hour later to check on him and turned on the light in his bedroom that she first became aware that something was very wrong and that she had "just started our new sweet journey of hell."

Despite the circumstances of her son's death, Melanie is adamant that Cash didn't commit suicide.   Not only had he been a happy kid with a positive outlook on life, but the position of his body seemed all wrong.   Instead, based on her own investigation including checking on online sources and talking with first responders, she has come to believe that her son had died because ha had been taking part in a bizarre online challenge being promoted on various social media platforms, especially TikTok.

Alternately known as the "blackout" or "pass out" challenge, participants are basically encouraged to choke themselves until the pass out, essentially a form of auto-asphyxiation.   Despite seeming harmless, the consequences of this kind of self-choking can be deadly considering it involves disrupting the flow of oxygen to the brain.  

“Anything that you’re doing to ever try and make yourself choke, pass out, blackout, the way you’re doing that is by depriving your brain of oxygen,” said Dr. Ayisha Kurji, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Saskatchewan in a media interview about the bizarre new trend.  "So any in any way, shape or form, this challenge is dangerous.”   While the "challenge" itself isn't really new, having surfaced in some form or other for decades, Tik Tok videos have created an entirely new audience of people (primarily young people) willing to give it a try.  “Now, even if your friends don’t know about it, if you’re on social media, you can see what’s happening all around the world. And if you’re on social media a lot and you are seeing a lot of these challenges, then it almost seems normal to do it.” Dr. Kurji added.

And deaths are occurring as a result.   In January, a ten-year-old girl in Palermo, Italy was found dead by her parents.   She had apparently put a belt around her neck and was holding her breath while recording herself for a Tik Tok video.   While Tik Tok, a company owned by ByteDance which is based in China, normally prevents children younger than thirteen from registering for the service, this has been easy to circumvent in the past.   Italian regulators are already calling for Tik Tok to block the accounts of any users in Italy whose age it could not verify.

According to a transparency report released in December,   TikTok has updated its policies on self-harm and suicide and expanded parental control options.  The company also says that it has removed about 90 million videos for violating the app’s community guidelines or terms of service, which is less than one per cent of all videos uploaded.  Among those videos that have been reported and removed,  6.2 per cent were flagged under “suicide, self-harm, and dangerous acts.”  

But that may be just the tip of the iceberg given Tik Tok's popularity and the relentless drive among teenagers to gain more viewers by engaging in increasingly risky stunts.   In the meantime, parents like Melanie Anderson can only wonder when the next tragedy will occur.  

 

 

https://thestarphoenix.com/news/local-news/saskatoon-mom-who-says-she-lost-son-to-tiktok-challenge-wants-to-protect-youth

 

Is There a Suicide Narrative?

The Narrative Crisis Model of suicide posits that when individuals with trait vulnerabilities for suicide face stressful life events, they may develop distorted perceptions of themselves and society that culminate in a sense of no future. Referred to as the suicide narrative, these perceptions makes them more likely to experience the Suicidal Crisis Syndrome, an acute affective condition that increases the risk of engaging in suicidal ideation behaviors. The goal of a study recently published in the Journal of Affective Disorders was to assess the stage components of this model. The stage components of the NCM were assessed among adult psychiatric inpatients (N = 223; listwise N = 85) aged 18–65 years old and admitted for suicidal ideation or attempts. Suicidal outcomes were assessed at one month follow-up. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to assess the model and its prediction of prospective suicidal outcomes. Results showed that the model was supported by the SEM and proved to be a good fit for the data. Each temporal stage was significantly predicted by the precedent stage in the model and 13% of the variance in suicidal ideation and behaviors (when assessed conjointly) were explained by the model. When suicidal ideation and attempts were assessed separately, the amount of variance explained was 10.8% for suicidal ideation and 40.7% for suicidal attempts. The progression from trait vulnerabilities to suicidal outcomes proposed by the NCM was supported by the research findings. These findings have clinical implications in the assessment and treatment of suicide risk and will need replication with larger samples. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

Coroner Rules That "Psychotic Reaction" From Anti-Malarial Drug Caused Cambridge Student To Throw Herself From Plane

A U.K. coroner has ruled that an anti-malarial drug taken by a Cambridge University student led to the "psychotic reaction" which caused her to jump from a plane in Madagascar last year.   Alana Cutland, 19, was a natural sciences student at Cambridge University's Robinson College who had taken doxycycline, a tetracycline antibiotic used to prevent malaria, while staying in a remote lodge in Madagascar in July, 2019.  She had been part of a conservation project studying crabs, and, according to the manager at the lodge where she had been staying, began showing health problems soon after her arrival.   

This included  developing a series of "paranoia attacks" that began after she took the medication.   As a result of these attacks, she became fearful that she would be arrested if she failed to complete her research.    She also began refusing meals and was often seen "staring into space".  As a result of her health issues, she was forced to cut her participation in the project short.

On July 25, 2019, she boarded a Cessna C168 aircraft to travel to Antananarivo, Madagascar accompanied by a fellow volunteer, Ruth Johnson, and the pilot.  After ten minutes of flight, she undid her seatbelt and attempted to exit the plane by unfastening the door (the plane was at 1130 meters above sea level at the time).   Though Ruth Johnson attempted to restrain her, Alana Cutland managed to get free before falling to her death.    In the inquest which ended recently, Milton Keynes coroner Tom Osbourne told government regulators that there was a "direct link between doxycycline and Alana's death".  

It was quite apparent from the evidence that she had a psychotic reaction as a result of taking the drug and yet there is nothing on the drug information leaflet that either highlights or mentions this possibility,"  Osbourne says in a letter to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.  He also maintains that the death might have been avoidable if Alana or her parents had been aware of the possible side effects associated with the drug.   Alana's parents described her as a a "a bright, independent young woman, who was loved and admired by all those that knew her" and were devastated by the circumstances of her death.  

While many of the side effects associated with doxycycline use are well-documented, it has also been associated with psychiatric side effects, primarily anxiety, though confusion, depression, and hallucinations have also been reported.  The UK medicines regulator has announced a review of the suspected association between the drug and psychotic reactions which is still ongoing.