September 10th is World Suicide Prevention Day.
That seems straightforward enough.
Suicide is awful, more common than you’d think, and in many cases, highly preventable.
Perhaps most important, in virtually every culture and every ethnic group on the planet, suicide is highly stigmatized.
When tragedies hit, it is in our nature to ask why. The co-pilot in the horrific Germanwings crash had serious mental health problems, according to reports.
No one can deny that the untimely death of Robin Williams has affected us all in a multitude of different ways. In two separate blogs below, Drs. Schlozman and Beresin reflect on Mr. Williams’ legacy, what he meant—and still means—to them, and what we can all learn from this tragic loss.
Intro music written and performed by Dr. Gene Beresin.
Outro music performed by Dr. Gene Beresin.
In 2004, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made the difficult decision to apply a “black box” warning to virtually all antidepressant medications.
In this short video, parents of a champion swimmer who took her life by suicide, and the psychiatrist who treated her, talk to other parents about how to recognize warning signs of serious trouble.
To see more on various parenting concerns, visit our YouTube channel.
Tune in for more on medications with Dr. Timothy Wilens, Chief of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital.
As we’ve mentioned SSRIs in a number of posts, we’d like to go into a bit more detail about what these particular medications are, and how they work.
TV shows such a Glee and Modern Family have brought gay characters and storylines into the homes of millions of Americans. But for any child, the decision to come out of the closet remains one of the hardest things that a gay, lesbian, or bisexual person will do.
We’ve begun many of these posts with stories. We’re not going to do that with this post. When a child takes his or her life, we don’t need to make the post personal. The loss of a child to suicide is necessarily tragic, and deeply disturbing.