Tag: suicide

Puberty blocker curb has not led to suicide rise – review

There is no evidence of a large rise in suicides in young patients attending a gender identity clinic in London, an independent review has found.

Professor Louis Appleby was asked by Health Secretary Wes Streeting to examine the data following claims made by campaigners of a rise in suicide rates since puberty-blocking drugs were restricted at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in 2020.

Prof Appleby’s review concludes “the data do not support the claim”, and he added the way the issue had been discussed on social media was “insensitive, distressing and dangerous”.

Jo Maugham, founder of the Good Law Project which has led the claims, said he had “profound difficulties” with the review.

Unsafe language

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said it was vital that public discussion around the issue was handled responsibly.

Prof Appleby, who is a professor of psychiatry and experienced suicide researcher from the University of Manchester, said online discussions about the issue had gone against guidance on safe reporting of suicide.

“One risk is that young people and their families will be terrified by predictions of suicide as inevitable without puberty blockers – some of the responses on social media show this,” he said.

There was also the risk that distressed adolescents hearing that message could be led to copy the behaviour warned about.

He also said the claims placed in the public domain about an “explosion” in suicides “do not meet basic standards for statistical evidence”.

The Good Law Project is challenging the decision by the previous health secretary to end the prescription of puberty-blocking drugs by private clinics to children and young people with gender dysphoria.

That was recommended in the Cass Review, published in April, which found “remarkably weak” evidence on the use of the treatment.

In response to their claims, the new health secretary launched an independent review led by Prof Appleby which analysed data from NHS England on suicides of patients at the Tavistock clinic, based on an audit at the trust.

Covering the period between 2018-19 and 2023-24, he found there were 12 suicides – five in the three years leading up to 2020-21 and seven in the three years afterwards.

“This is essentially no difference,” Prof Appleby says in his report, “taking account of expected fluctuations in small numbers, and would not reach statistical significance.”

He adds: “In the under 18s specifically, there were 3 suicides before and 3 after 2020-21.”

The patients who died were in different points in the care system, including post-discharge, suggesting no consistent link to any one aspect of care, Prof Appleby noted.

However, he said it was likely there had been a rise over a longer period as more young people at risk came forward with gender identity problems.

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Switzerland BANS ‘suicide capsule’ dubbed the ‘Tesla of euthanasia’ that was ‘due to be used for the first time this month’ and threatens to prosecute assisted-dying advocate behind it

A ‘death capsule’ designed to carry out assisted suicides has been banned by prosecutors in Switzerland weeks before it was set to be used for the first time.

The Sarco, short for sarcophagus, would enable the euthanasia patient inside it to press a button and die ‘within seconds’, according to the company behind it, Exit Switzerland.

The case – which looks like something out of a sci-fi film and has been described as the ‘Tesla of euthanasia’ – fills with nitrogen to starve the occupant of oxygen, rendering the patient unconscious before they die.

Its creator, controversial assisted dying advocate Dr Philip Nitschke, claims his invention could allow users to die swiftly and painlessly.

But now prosecutors in Switzerland’s Schaffhausen Canton have warned that anyone assisting someone to use the pods could face up to five years behind bars, according to Swiss media reports.

Public Prosecutor Peter Sticher warned of ‘serious consequences’ for Nitschke for ‘inducement and aiding and abetting suicide for selfish reasons’.

In a letter obtained by Swiss media, Sticher said: ‘There is no reliable information about the method of killing.

‘[It is] completely unclear who has control over which mechanical process during the dying process.’

Prosecutors say that under section 115 of the canton’s penal code, it would be impossible to establish who was responsible for the killing and as a result blocked the device’s introduction.

The ban followed after Nitschke revealed in an online forum on June 10 that Sarco’s deployment in Switzerland was expected ‘in the next few weeks.’

He said: ‘The machine can be towed anywhere for the death.

‘It can be in an idyllic outdoor setting or on the premises of an assisted-suicide organisation, for example.’

While the Australian researcher claims that his device would give people the chance to end their lives in a ‘peaceful’ way, pro-life groups have warned that the sleek, furturistic looking pods ‘glamorise suicide’. 

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Church of Scientology ignored woman’s ‘very real psychosis,’ stopped her from receiving mental health care before suicide, lawsuit claims

The mother of a Florida woman who died by suicide has slapped the Church of Scientology with a wrongful death lawsuit, alleging the church “brainwashed” her daughter who struggled with her mental health, into thinking traditional therapy or medical treatments were “unnecessary and abhorrent.”

Whitney Mills, 40, of Clearwater, died by suicide in May 2022, according to the civil lawsuit filed in the Circuit Court of the Sixth Judicial Circuit in Pinellas County.

Leila Mills alleges the church knew quite well that her daughter — who was among the highest ranks in the church after shelling out “hundreds of thousands of dollars to attain her status,” the lawsuit claims — was struggling to cope.

But “upon learning of her problems, the Scientology defendants took control of Mills’ medical care, thus foreclosing her from obtaining the exact treatment she needed,” her family claims.

Instead, she was “misinformed and misdiagnosed with Lyme disease and a cancerous ovarian cyst” while the church, and specifically one doctor was “largely ignoring her very real psychosis and mental health crisis.”

Whitney Mills was “extorted” by the church, her mother says, and everything the church “foisted” on her daughter was “outside the field of mental health treatment, and everything failed,” the family’s attorney Ramon Rasco wrote.

Stopped from seeking any real help, Whitney Mills “felt she had no other choice,” but to kill herself.

“Not only did they not properly care for her, contrary to the duty they undertook, they actually suggested she ‘drop the body,’” the lawsuit emphasizes repeatedly, using a phrase coined by Church of Scientology leaders including founder L. Ron Hubbard.

The phrase means suicide or death or to leave one’s corporal body, according to the lawsuit.

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‘The beginning of an OnlyFans video’: Jailers were watching porn and didn’t notice noose hanging in jail cell, inspection report says

Eight jailers at a beleaguered downtown Los Angeles jail were watching porn when they overlooked a noose hanging in the jail cell of a suicidal inmate, a new inspection report said.

The jailers — LA County Sheriff’s deputies — were caught during a recent inspection of “1750 Unit” at downtown’s Men’s Central Jail, which inspectors noted was extremely hot and humid with no natural light, had trash in the hallways and a whole host of other problems, according to the report by Haley Broder and Eric Miller, commissioners with the LA County Sybil Brand Commission on Institutional Inspections.

“To me, it looked like the beginning of an OnlyFans video or something,” Miller told the LA Times. “It was women in underwear, and it certainly didn’t look like they were going to put more clothes on. It looked like they were going to take them off.”

Broder told The Times the conditions in the lockup were terrible.

“There was just continuous neglect and bad conditions,” she said. “People were saying they were hungry. We saw people with giant open wounds. The trash was just everywhere — there’s so much trash. It smells. There are fires. And it seems, in general, there is just a genuine lack of interest in changing that situation.”

The porn watching came to light as commissioners conducting the inspection discovered a “self-constructed noose” hanging from the ceiling of a cell.

“Though unlikely to support the incarcerated person’s weight, the noose was obvious to anyone looking into the cell and its presence was consistent with the suicidal ideation articulated by the incarcerated person while taking his shower,” the report said.

When the commissioners reported the noose to deputies — eight of whom were sitting in an office watching a video on a large-screen TV — they said they’d check on the cell later and continued watching the video, the report said.

The commissioners left, completed their inspection of the various rows in the unit and returned to the office where the deputies remained watching a “sexually explicit video on their wide-screen television,” the report said.

It was only when a female commissioner walked in that “the deputies hurriedly removed the video from the screen.”

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California Trans Study Finds Remarkable Increase In Suicides Post-Operation – Matches Sweden And U.S. Is Expanding Trans Operations To Illegals In America

Everyone paying attention to how parents are being slammed with the fearful and false narrative that if they do not affirm their gender-confused child choices that their child may commit suicide if the parents do not agree need to comprehend that narrative is a lie.  

A study using California government data found suicide rates double after surgery for transgender females who receive male-to-female gender change surgeries. 

A 2020 analysis of the entire Swedish population found there is “no advantage of surgery in relation to subsequent mood or anxiety disorder-related health care visits or prescriptions or hospitalizations following suicide attempts in that comparison.”

The California study, published in the Journal of Urology, studied 859 Californians who underwent a vaginoplasty (male-to-female gender surgery), and 357 who underwent phalloplasty (female-to-male surgery) for two years before and after their surgeries. 

“All persons undergoing feminizing (vaginoplasty) and masculinizing (metoidioplasty/ phalloplasty) genital gender affirming surgery were identified in California from 2012-2018 from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development datasets using appropriate ICD-9/10 codes,” reads the California study abstract. 

Of those who underwent gender affirmation surgery, a similar proportion of vaginoplasty and phalloplasty recipients experienced at least one psychiatric encounter, coming in at 22.2% and 20.7% respectively. 

Suicide rates were higher among vaginoplasty than phalloplasty patients after their surgeries; vaginoplasty suicide rates more than doubled from 1.5% to 3.3%, whereas phalloplasty suicide rates remained stable at 0.8% before and after surgery.

“Although both the phalloplasty and vaginoplasty patients have similar overall rates of psychiatric encounters, suicide attempts are more common in the latter. In fact, our observed rate of suicide attempts in the phalloplasty group is actually similar to the general population, while the vaginoplasty group’s rate is more than double that of the general population,” reads the study. “Patients undergoing [gender affirmation surgery] with a history of prior psychiatric emergencies or feminizing transition are at higher risk and should be counseled appropriately.”

Medi-Cal, the state’s taxpayer-supported public health system, includes hormonal and surgical gender transitions for beneficiaries, which expanded on January 1 to include illegal immigrants. 

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Nex Benedict, Oklahoma nonbinary teen, died by suicide, medical examiner rules

Nex Benedict, the 16-year-old Oklahoma student who died one day after a fight in a high school bathroom, died by suicide, the state’s medical examiner said on Wednesday. 

The summary report said that Benedict, who identified as nonbinary and used they/them pronouns, died due to the combined toxicity of two different medications. 

“From the beginning of this investigation, Owasso Police observed many indications that this death was the result of suicide,” the Owasso Police Department said in a statement after the report was published. “However, investigators did not wish to confirm that information without the final results being presented by the Oklahoma Medical Examiners Office.”

The day before they died, Benedict was involved in a fight in the girl’s bathroom at Owasso High School. A school nurse sent Benedict to the hospital, where they told police officers that three girls were harassing them. Benedict responded by throwing water at the girls, which prompted the fight.

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MH370’s suicidal pilot entombed plane and its 239 passengers at bottom of the ocean after perfect ditching, says flight expert 10 years after plane disappeared

The ‘suicidal’ pilot of the MH370 Malaysia Airlines flight perfectly ditched the plane into the sea, entombing it and the 239 passengers aboard at the bottom of the ocean, a flight expert has claimed ten years after it disappeared.

British pilot Simon Hardy has said he believes that the plane was sunk into the ocean at a spot that has never been searched before.

The Boeing 777 aircraft vanished from radar while en route from Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Satellite data showed the plane deviated from its flight path to head over the southern Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have crashed.

There are fears that pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, was responsible for deliberately crashing MH370 in a murder-suicide of a shocking scale, which he committed because of problems in his personal life.

Shah had allegedly split with his wife Fizah Khan, and was said to be furious that a relative, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, had been given a five-year jail sentence for sodomy shortly before he boarded the plane for the flight to Beijing. But the pilot’s wife has angrily denied any personal problems, while other family members and friends said he was a devoted family man and loved his job.

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Forget pro life, America’s becoming pro death! Map reveals how 29 US states have either legalized euthanasia or are considering it

A majority of US states have either legalized medically assisted suicide or are considering legislation that would do so.

The pro-medical-dying movement has seen a groundswell of support since struggling to rack up wins in the 90s, with most successful initiatives only coming into practice after 2013. 

In ten states and Washington, DC, euthanasia is legal, while 19 other states are considering their own legalization measures.

Most of the states where it is legal allow doctors to administer life-ending medications to a person with six months or fewer to live, but the exact criteria varies by state depending on who is in charge there.

The US population is aging rapidly – by 2040, about one in five Americans will be 65 or older. At the same time, more than 170 million Americans could be living with one or more chronic conditions by 2030.

But while many state leaders and health professionals are advocating for assisted dying as a new option for end of life care, many doctors argue that the practice runs counter to the foundation of their profession.

Efforts in the 90s to legalize medically assisted suicide crashed more often than not, with the exception of Oregon, which, in 1997, became the first state to legalize what it calls ‘death with dignity.’

Authors of the Oregon legislation were careful in writing it not to characterize the act as a suicide, assisted suicide, mercy killing, or homicide, part of an effort to rebrand and reposition it as a medically sanctioned and regulated procedure.

The term ‘assisted suicide’ and others like it are now considered by doctors to be outdated, opting instead to call it ‘medical aid in dying’ because the patient controls when they take the death-inducing medication prescribed by a doctor.

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Canada halts controversial assisted suicide program for mentally ill due to lack of doctors willing to participate

Canada has delayed the extension of its assisted suicide program to people suffering solely from mental illness, health officials announced Monday. 

Canada offers medically assisted death to terminally and chronically ill people, but the plan to extend the program to people with mental illnesses has divided Canadians, the New York Times reported.

Some critics attribute the problem to a lack of adequate psychiatric care in the country.

The controversial policy would allow anyone in Canada with an incurable medical condition to apply for assisted suicide, even if the disease is not terminal, which makes the law one of the most liberal assisted suicide programs in the world. 

Canada introduced medically assisted dying after its Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that requiring people to cope with intolerable suffering infringed on fundamental rights to liberty and security.

The law was expanded in 2021 to include people experiencing “grievous and irremediable” conditions, such as depression and other mental health issues. 

Over 13,000 Canadians were euthanized as part of the program in 2022, the Daily Mail reported. 

When the program was announced last year, one conservative lawmaker “charged that the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is promoting a ‘culture of death.’”

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Drugmakers Hid Suicides, Manipulated Data to Falsely Show Safety in Antidepressant Drug Trials

Every now and then, a highly profitable pharmaceutical will come along that everyone also knows is quite dangerous.

Remarkably, rather than this stopping the product, it will often be pushed to market and the profits it generates will be used to ensure any objections to its safety get ignored and blown to the wayside.

One of my goals in writing has hence been to review the scandalous history of some of the most dangerous pharmaceuticals on the market.

This was done both to help those being harmed by them (e.g., consider the story of statins and the story of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs) and to illustrate that the horrendous malfeasance we’ve observed from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) throughout COVID-19 has been its standard operating procedure.

For example, I recently covered the story of Merck’s Vioxx, an unsafe and unneeded painkiller that was kept on the market until outside investigators proved it was causing heart attacks and strokes (estimated to have killed 120,000 people by the time Vioxx was withdrawn), something Merck was fully aware of from the start.

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