Slide Show of Celebrity Suicides

This list has the same variety as any compilation of suicide by ordinary people.

Nancy Grace Deposed in Suicide Case. Has Bad Cold

"Nancy Grace's deposition could make you sick .... if you were sitting in the same room with her.

Grace sat for her deposition in Atlanta today, in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the parents of a woman who killed herself after getting grilled by Grace.

We're told Grace had an epic cold and barely made it through the depo. Various people in the room were bringing her Vicks cough drops, Kleenex and other accoutrement.

Our sources say the depo wasn't groundbreaking ... no smoking gun."

Read more: http://www.tmz.com/2010/01/28/nancy-grace-deposition-sick-melinda-duckett-wrongful-death-lawsuit-cnn/3#ixzz0kaMoYKse

Designer Suicide Preventable, but by Those Around Him

Those around the person are in the best position to intervene, and to get the person into ordinary treatment of their condition.

"In one sense, Mr. McQueen’s suicide wasn’t a surprise. Statistically, according to mental health studies, he fitted the characteristics of those most likely to kill themselves — single, middle-aged men who are under severe stress, which bereavement would certainly cause. Suicide is also a means of escape.

Mr. Leane believes that Mr. McQueen couldn’t deal with the pain of losing his mother. “She understood him,” he said. And that wasn’t an easy matter for his father. “With East End families, there’s always an issue with tradition,” Mr. Leane explained. “Lee’s dad was a cabbie, his brothers were a builder and a cabbie, and Lee wanted to make dresses. It wasn’t on their radar. I think there was a clash with his father in the beginning, because he didn’t understand. He said, ‘Now, what you want to do if you want to sell clothes is get a stall in the market.’ Lee told me that. And when Lee got the Givenchy job, he said to his dad, ‘Now, that’s the way to sell clothes.’ Lee loved his dad and his brothers. They just didn’t understand what he was getting into.”

Mr. Leane also thinks that Ms. Blow’s death and the prospect of losing a beloved dog were also contributing factors. “When he lost Issie, it was one of the elements, really,” he said. Based on interviews with his closest friends, this seems the most plausible explanation for his suicide. “It’s not great having all those important women disappear,” Mr. Treacy said. “And his mum was very important. He was the youngest.”"

Cluster of Suicides at Disney World

The exploitation of this tragedy by an union official is unfortunate. They have a model to address the problem in the Air Force program. The company also has the ability (less than the military) to force depressed or alcoholic workers into ordinary treatment. The Air Force program is history's most effective suicide prevention program. Yet it required no innovation, just the application of modern treatment methods.

Impossible that Neurontin Caused This Suicide

Neurontin is a weak mood stabilizer that likely prevents suicide. The suicider took it for over a year. When medications cause paradoxical intoxication and agitation, they most often do so at the start.

This family could not face its role in the suicide. It likely sought to scapegoat a medication. I am angry that Pfizer failed to fight this claim to the end. This settlement will invite 100's of additional lawsuits instead of deterring them.

The case citation is Shearer v. Pfizer Inc., 07-cv-11428- PBS, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston).

Another Suicide After Bullying

These charges have to be unconstitutional. The act was a suicide. The charge is bullying, a vague, meaningless word. Now, anyone who offended the suicider may face criminal charges, e.g a boyfriend breaking up, a teacher correcting an assignment, a parent yelling at the victim.

In Japan, bullying causes much teen suicide. It takes another form than here, but is very devastating to the target. It consists of shunning. That is apparently unbearable to Japaneses kids. Under this Mass crew, not saying hello to a kid may become actionable and may result in prison time.

The suicide is a voluntary, intentional act. Without it, the bullying would have resulted in school discipline, not criminal charges. The defendants are being charged because of the act of another. Even if one had told the suicider, kill yourself, it would change nothing.One is being scapegoated for the act of another, in violation of the right to a fair hearing.

On the civil side, does the school have a duty to maintain a harassment free zone for all students? The school has a duty to provide an education, not physical security services. The concept of a hostile environment is a feminist tool to intimidate males, so that they cannot even look at a female without getting fired, sort of Chinese Virgin Empress style. Any parent or lawyer bringing such claims should be driven out of town, because they are just pretextually trying to plunder the school and the taxpayer.

The proper remedy for the victim of harassment, bullying? A smart slap to the face of the offending pig. If you want a legal remedy, get a protection order against the harassers. Sue the harassers for assault or discrimination, but not the school.

Most catastrophes are multi-factorial. This suicide likely had many causes. Bullying was likely a weak one among many.

The family is likely the biggest factor in suicide. They likely had the best knowledge about her condition. They had the best opportunity to get her treated. They had the most power to supervise her. They had the most power to inflict despair on her by their expressions of negative emotions against her. They may have had the knowledge of the genetic predisposition to suicide. We do not know if she was an abuse victim.

The immature utterances of a bunch of knuckleheads pales in suicide power compared to those factors. If the prosecutor failed to have these factors evaluated, including any finding of intoxicating substances in the body, the feminist lawyer must resign her position. This is a pretextual opportunity to advance the feminist orthodoxy that males are the cause of all female problems, however compelling factors closer to home might be.

"A Massachusetts prosecutor says nine teens have been charged in the "unrelenting" bullying of a teenage girl who killed herself, and two of them have been charged with statutory rape.

Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel (SHY'-buhl) says 15-year-old Phoebe Prince of South Hadley suffered months of nearly constant stalking and harassment in person and online. She killed herself Jan. 14.

Scheibel says school officials knew about the bullying, but none will face criminal charges."

And more.

Smoking Is an Independent Risk Factor for Suicide

The feature common to smoking and to suicide is impulsivity, naturally. If that is not true, and smoking is truly an independent risk factor, one wonders if treatments for smoking, such as varenicline, reduce the suicide rate. This would contradict the extremist scapegoating of this medication.

From Medscape Medical News

Smoking May Be an Independent Risk Factor for Suicidality

Crina Frincu-Mallos, PhD

March 11, 2010 (Baltimore, Maryland) — Smoking may be an independent risk factor for suicidality, new research suggests.

A longitudinal study presented here at the Anxiety Disorders Association of America 30th Annual Conference shows a strong association between smoking and suicidality in a cohort of 3021 adolescents and young adults aged 14 to 24 years at baseline.

The Early Developmental Stages of Psychopathology study, a prospective, longitudinal study, showed that prior occasional, regular smoking and nicotine dependence were associated with an increased risk for the onset of suicidal ideation, with odds ratios (ORs) ranging from 1.5 to 2.7.

Prior regular smoking and nicotine dependence were also associated with the subsequent first onset of suicide attempts (ORs, 3.1-4.5). According to the investigators led by Roselind Lieb, PhD, preexisting suicidality was not associated with subsequent smoking or nicotine dependence.

"Smoking increases the risk for subsequent suicidality. We have found it is a risk factor independent of other psychopathologies or other drug use,” Dr. Lieb, professor of epidemiology and health psychology, University of Basel, Switzerland, told Medscape Psychiatry.

The study appears to confirm results from a previous 10-year, longitudinal study published in 2005 that showed that current daily smoking, but not past smoking, predicted the subsequent occurrence of suicidal thoughts or attempts independent of major depression, prior substance use, and suicidal predisposition (Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2005;62:328-334).

Dose-Response Relationship

To further investigate the potential link between smoking and suicidality, Dr. Lieb and colleagues used baseline (T0), 1-year (T1), 4-year (T2), and 10-year (T3) follow-up data. Regular smoking, nicotine dependence, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts were assessed using the standardized Munich-Composite International Diagnostic Interview.

Analyses were based on logistic regression controlling for age and sex and additionally for alcohol and illicit substance use disorders, as well as major depression.

Longitudinal data from 2210 subjects were available for this study. Of these subjects, 33% (at T0), 44.7% (at T2), and 50.5% (at T3) were regular smokers. The trend was similar for nicotine-dependent subjects: 16.9% (at T0), 23.5% (at T2), and 28.3% (at T3).

In terms of suicidality, 10.1% (at T0), 13.8% (at T2), and 17.4% (at T3) reported cumulative suicidal ideations, and 1.8% (at T0), 4.8% (at T2), and 5.5% (at T3) reported suicide attempts.

The analyses of the 10-year follow-up data indicate that there is a dose-response relationship between the duration of smoking and suicidality.

For example, 7% of respondents with a former nicotine dependence (before T2 and during follow-up) attempted suicide, compared with 3.4% of respondents who were never dependent (OR, 2.12; P < .05). This rate increased from 10.1% for respondents who developed a new dependence during follow-up (between T2 and T3) to 16.8% for those who were former dependent smokers and remained so during follow-up.