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Suicide

Asian Women and Suicide tied to Model-Minority Stereotype

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In the wake of the VT shooting last month, another news source has confirmed what some mental health activists have been saying for years–and that is that racism and sexism has significant mental health consequences for those most impacted. This week, CNN reported that pressure to fulfill the model-minority stereotype contributes to the startling rate of suicide attempts among Asian American women. This main character of the story professor Eliza Noh, who began researching suicide among Asian women after her sister took her life, explained:

In my study, the model minority pressure is a huge factor,” says Noh, who studied 41 Asian-American women who’d attempted or contemplated suicide. “Sometimes it’s very overt – parents say, ‘You must choose this major or this type of job’ or ‘You should not bring home As and Bs, only As,” she says. “And girls have to be the perfect mother and daughter and wife as well.” …

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PubMed | Naked Suicide

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Abstract

Suicide attempts and completions by individuals while naked remain unexplored, both by clinicians and in the professional literature. Nakedness at the time of the incident conveys important information about an individual's mental state. Motivations for attempting or completing suicide while naked are discussed. Nakedness during a suicide attempt is presumptive evidence of high risk for suicide completion. Deliberate self-harm, without intent to die, is not usually inflicted while naked. The clinical and forensic implications of naked suicide are explored. In completed suicides, the state of dress, including partial undress and nakedness may provide important clues in a psychological autopsy. Forensic psychiatrists and treating clinicians who encounter naked suicides are afforded a unique opportunity to advance our knowledge. Letters to the editor and case reports would stimulate discourse about this little understood phenomenon...

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Opera Subculture and Suicide for Honor.

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Abstract

Suicide attempts and completions by individuals while naked remain unexplored, both by clinicians and in the professional literature. Nakedness at the time of the incident conveys important information about an individual's mental state. Motivations for attempting or completing suicide while naked are discussed. Nakedness during a suicide attempt is presumptive evidence of high risk for suicide completion. Deliberate self-harm, without intent to die, is not usually inflicted while naked. The clinical and forensic implications of naked suicide are explored. In completed suicides, the state of dress, including partial undress and nakedness may provide important clues in a psychological autopsy. Forensic psychiatrists and treating clinicians who encounter naked suicides are afforded a unique opportunity to advance our knowledge. Letters to the editor and case reports would stimulate discourse about this little understood phenomenon....

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Bondage and Suicide

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Abstract

Bondage" is a well-established category of deviant sexual behavior. It includes practices for erotic pleasure of being humiliated, enslaved, and physically bound and restrained. Life is threatened when, as is common, neck binding or partial asphyxiation forms part of the behavior. In the United States there are yearly about 50 such deaths, sometimes suicide, usually by accident. We report two fatal cases rich in details provided by the now deceased. In addition, we interviewed nine men and three women who responded to a notice in the underground press. Subjects were diverse in character and varied in the details of their bondage behavior. All of the men were isolated, depressed, and oriented toward death. Their masochism was first a challenge, then an invitation to death. When they see psychiatrists (for depression), the sexual problems are minimized.

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Homicidal Hanging Masquerading as Suicide

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Abstract

Homicidal hanging is rare and presents special problems for the forensic pathologist. We report a case of homicide by hanging masquerading as suicide, in which the forensic evidence was of crucial importance. The victim was a 61 years old man, who was found in his house suspended by a rope around his neck. The autopsy showed fresh bruises due to blunt trauma. Moreover, a voluminous subdural haematoma with brain swelling was found which indicated that the victim was unconscious at the time of the hanging. An obvious vital reaction consisting of cutaneous bleeding in the ligature mark supported the opinion that the deceased was alive and not dead at the time of the hanging. The estimation of the time of death was of great importance, as only one other person could have been present at the estimated time interval. This person was later sentenced to prison for manslaughter.

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Criteria For Homicide And Suicide On Victims Of Extended Suicide Due To Sharp Force Injury.

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Abstract

This report is about the findings in association with the extended suicides of nine victims killed by sharp force. All victims were killed by sharp force. The perpetrators were predominantly the parents, the victims their children. Regarding the criteria for differentiating self-inflicted injuries from injuries inflicted by another person, the victims' injuries presented patterns usually found solely in suicides. Thus eight of nine cases presented tentative and hesitation injuries, in three of five cases areas of injury covered by clothing had been exposed beforehand. Despite extremely narrow intercostal spaces in children, injuries to the bones in thoracic stabbing were avoided more often than not (four of seven cases). Only the criterion "defence injury" occurred nearly as often as in homicide victims (three of nine cases). The psychopathology of extended suicide can explain this pattern. The perpetrator's motive is characterised by his pseudoaltruistic belief to save the loved ones from a world that is ...

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Homicide Or Suicide: The Killing Of Suicidal Persons By Law Enforcement Officers

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Abstract

This paper presents 15 deaths of suicidal persons in Oregon and Florida who, by their behavior, sufficiently provoked law enforcement officers into killing them. Four deaths were certified as suicide, one as undetermined and ten as homicide. All of the deaths are individually described in detail and their case characteristics are presented in a table. The method of study is a descriptive analysis of the case characteristics, including 21 variables which are determined to be relevant to the classification of death. The variables were grouped into six categories: (a) personal information; (b) criminal behavior during the fatal incident; (c) dangerous behavior during the fatal incident; (d) toxicological data; (e) mental illness information; and (f) certification data. From the analysis, reasons for the opinions on manner of death classification are presented. All incidents were perceived as life-threatening to law officers, family members, or hostages. All victims were male except one,...

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Self-Inflicted Hanging with Bound Wrists and a Gag.

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Abstract

This is a report of an unusual suicidal hanging by a 30-year-old male. He was found in his bedroom by friends, suspended from a ceiling light fixture by an electrical cord around his neck. His hands were bound behind his back and a sock gag was in his mouth. A paperback book was lying on the bed headboard. The book contained a detailed but totally inaccurate description of a fantasized hanging which may have contributed to the unusual binding and gagging. Homicide and autoerotic accident had to be considered. A series of suicide notes, however, simplified the case....

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Lifetime Suicidal Ideation and Suicide Attempts in Asian Americans

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Abstract

Few studies have examined the role of culturally relevant factors in suicidal behavior among Asian Americans. Using the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS) (Alegria et al., 2004; Heeringa et al., 2004), the current study examined the role of culturally related variables (family conflict, perceived discrimination, and ethnic identity) on suicidal ideation and suicide attempts in a nationally representative sample of 2,095 Asian Americans. Important covariates were sociodemographic characteristics (gender, age, marital status, years of education, household poverty, and nativity status), depressive and anxiety disorders, and number of chronic conditions. Gender related correlates were also explored. The lifetime prevalence of suicidal ideation and attempts was 8.8% and 2.5%, respectively. Female gender, family conflict, perceived discrimination, and the presence of lifetime depressive or anxiety disorders were positively correlated with suicidal ideation and attempts. A high level of identification with one’s ethnic group was associated with lower rates of suicide attempts. Among Asian men...,

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Suicide Note Rights and Liabilities

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By their very nature, suicide notes are controversial documents.  Nobody likes to think or talk about them, despite accompanying many – probably most – of the suicides that occur in America.  There were 34,598 reported suicide deaths in 2007 alone, making it the fourth leading cause of death for adults aged 18-65.

So, where to begin?

Who owns the note

A Slate article from 2008 states that either the medical examiner or sheriff “controls the contents” of a suicide note.  While true, Eugene Volokh notes that this does not resolve the issue of ownership.  The imperative to investigate deaths grants the government custody over the note, but not title to it; the note, like other personal property, becomes part of the deceased’s estate to be disposed of by will or intestacy under the relevant state’s law. (It would be particularly interesting to see how this issue would resolve in a community property state.)...

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Suicide in psychiatric hospital in-patients

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Abstract

Background Psychiatric hospital inpatients are known to be at high risk of suicide, yet there is little reliable knowledge of risk factors or their predictive power.

Aims To identify risk factors for suicide in psychiatric hospital in-patients and to evaluate their predictive power in detecting people at risk of suicide.

Method Using a case-control design, 112 people who committed suicide while in-patients in psychiatric hospitals were compared with 112 randomly selected controls. Univariate analysis and multivariate analyses were used to estimate odds ratios and adjusted likelihood ratios.

Results The rate of suicide in psychiatric in-patients was 13.7 (95% CI 11.7-16.1) per 10 000 admissions. There were five predictive factors with likelihood ratios >2, following adjustment: planned suicide attempt, 4.1; actual suicide attempt, 4.9; recent bereavement, 4.0; presence of delusions, 2.3; chronic mental illness, 2.2; and family history of suicide, 4.6...

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The Role Of Depression In Couples Involved In Murder-suicide And Homicide. Rosenbaum M1.

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Abstract

Twelve couples in cases of murder-suicide were compared to 24 couples in cases of homicide during the period 1978 to 1987 in Albuquerque, N.M. Data were obtained from police, the courts, hospital records, and interviews with friends and family of the deceased. The most striking findings were that perpetrators of murder-suicide were depressed (75%) and men (95%), while perpetrators of homicide were not depressed and one-half were women. The data indicate that the murder-suicide and homicide groups are two different populations...

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A Planned Complex Suicide: Need For A High Index Of Suspicion.

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Abstract

Unusual ways of committing suicide are reported in the medico-legal literature, but few refer to the so-called "planned complex suicide" (PCS). PCS, also termed primary combined suicide, is defined as the combination of two or more methods of injury by the suicidal person to prevent failure of a single method of suicide alone. In contrast, in secondary or unplanned complex suicide, the victim uses the second method of suicide only after failure of the first method.2 Combinations of shooting, hanging, burning, and/or poisoning have been used as suicidal methods. Sometimes the double use of one method such as simultaneous gunshot wound from two firearms or ingestion of two different toxic substances has been reported. This gives the suicidal person a high degree of protection against failure of one of the methods, as both modes of injury are relatively certain. This case report demonstrates...

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Differences In Characteristics Between Suicide Victims Who Left Notes Or Not

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Abstract

Background

Suicide notes (SN) are one of markers of the severity of a suicide attempt and are said to provide a valuable insight into the thinking of suicide victims before the fatal act [Shah, A., De, T., 1998. Suicide and the elderly. Int. J. Psychiat. Clin Pract. 2, 3–18]. To examine whether suicide victims who wrote notes (note writers: NW) differ from those who did not, we investigated the characteristics of a sample of more than 5000 Japanese suicides using multiple logistic regression analysis.

Methods

For all suicide victims (5161 cases), we examined the following information: gender, age, suicide method, reason for suicide, marital status, residential status, history of psychiatric disorders, previous suicidal behavior, physical disease, and content of suicide notes.

Results

Mean incidence of NW was 30.1% (male: 29.7%, female: 30.8%). NW in Japan had the following characteristics; higher proportion in female and living alone,...

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Complex Suicide Versus Complicated Suicide

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Abstract

In complex suicides, two or more methods are applied either simultaneously or one after the other. The purpose of the present study was to distinguish such complex suicides in the proper sense from “complicated suicides”, which are characterized by an unintentional secondary traumatization following the original suicide method. The study material comprises 1217 suicides investigated at the Budapest Institute of Forensic Medicine in the period from 2004 to 2006. Among these, 4.43% (n = 54) accounted for planned or unplanned complex suicides, whereas 0.49% (n = 6) were categorized as “complicated suicides”. The latter group included four fatalities due to unintended falls from a height (for instance after breaking of the hanging noose), one death from electrocution and one case of drowning. The succession of a failed suicidal act and a secondary (“unforeseen” and therefore “accidental”) trauma with fatal outcome may cause problems in determining the manner and cause of death....

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Masking And Bondage In Suicidal Hanging

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Abstract

The body of a 35-year-old man was found hanging in a relatively isolated place outdoors. A vest was wrapped over his head, neck and lower part of the face. The hands were loosely tied in front of the body. The vest was tucked between the neck and the ligature, to act as a pad. Thorough scene examination and post-mortem examination excluded any evidence of foul play. Although bondage is usually associated with autoerotic practices in asphyxiation deaths, it was established that this case was a suicide. DNA was used as a supportive measure to determine that the handkerchief and vest belonged to the deceased....

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