Shiny things from the day: In Arrested development, at Mosaic, Virginia Hughes looks at a handful of girls who won’t age and an aging scientist who’s determined to figure out why. Literary hero to zero On the rise and fall of literary reputations. New Research on Facebook, Fellowship, and Suicide Clusters – Pacific Standard: The Science […]
Continue reading →The wonderful actor and writer Stephen Fry attempted suicide last year. Yesterday — by chance the same day a story of mine about suicide came out in the Times — he wrote a beautiful post about that attempt. The post gets at several of the many strange and contradictory mysteries of suicide, and dwelt with […]
Continue reading →On average, about 700 Americans kill themselves each week — but in the fine-weather weeks of May and June, the toll rises closer to 800, sometimes higher. Every year, suicide peaks with the tulips and lilacs — increasing roughly 15 percent over the annual average to create one of psychiatry’s most consistent epidemiological patterns. It […]
Continue reading →Should soldiers who survive suicide attempts be court-martialed — tossed from the military in shame? It’s a sticky question that gets stickier on examination. USA Today looks at it through the prism of a case in which a Marine private was court-martialed after being convicted of ‘self-injury’ after he slit his wrists in a barracks […]
Continue reading →My post two days ago on the links between depression and creativity sparked some smart comments. Perhaps the best was sent to me privately by the excellent blogger The NeuroCritic, and I am highlighting it in its own post here, with The Neurocritic’s permission, because it makes a an important point that I failed to note […]
Continue reading →This is a good example of how reflexive diagnoses, as PTSD has become for any combat veteran (and sometimes even prospective combat veterans — i.e., troops preparing to deploy), can do harm. They can lead you to ignore other possible causes of the symptoms on display.
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