Misinformation Does Not Help Anyone

Misinformation does not help anyone regardless of the good intentions.  I saw this meme on LinkIn and my comment is below…

 

This  may be true for some mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. It would also be true to say many mental illnesses have a no fault genetic predisposition. However, many mental illnesses do have fault… Not necessarily with the person suffering from the illness… Perhaps their parents, foster parents, spouse, a stranger or a situation out of their control… But someone is often to blame for the expression of the genetic predisposition… This is called epigenetics. This “there are no losers, everyone is a winner, no one is to blame” attitude is part of the reason for the spike in suicides and drug usage in America.

Book Review: “Serotonin: Prevent Depression, Lose Weight, and Improve Your Health and Happiness”

Customer Review

on June 26, 2018
Very repetitive. The author states the same things dozens of times in a row. The book reads more like a stream of consciousness than a thought out and planned book. The author offers many OPINIONS about serotonin but offers no references to back up claims.

Misnomers on Impulsive Suicide

The Last Person on Earth

A mother considers her son’s final thoughts and a type of suicide we don’t fully understand.

By 

https://www.thecut.com/2018/06/a-mother-considers-her-sons-final-thoughts.html

 

Firstly, let me say how sorry I am for this mother’s loss.  Losing a child is always a heart wrenching experience, but especially to suicide.  That being said, there are so many erroneous or questionable aspects to this story.

 

The author states that there were no red flags prior to her son’s suicide, yet she mentions several in her story.  According to Ms. Greene, Sol went to college specifically to play soccer and then didn’t get off the bench.  Sol also asked his parents to stop coming to the soccer games.  These would be two big red flags to me.  I also have the feeling that there must have been some other “impulsive” activity in Sol’s life that is being left out of the story.

 

Ms. Greene writes about Anthony Bourdain and how his mother said she would never think of him as committing suicide.  Bourdain was an addict… who still drank alcohol.  Substance and alcohol addictions often start as maladaptive stress responses… and I would argue that suicide is also a maladaptive stress response.  Through the view of this new paradigm, so called “impulsive” suicides can be seen less as outliers of behavioral patterns.  Also, most of what I have read regarding impulsive suicides deals with young people, mostly teens.  I can’t remember reading anything about people in their 60’s committing impulsive suicide without a pattern of impulsive behavior.

 

Ms. Greene quotes Kevin Hines regarding his suicide attempt… “Kevin climbed over the railing, leaned back, let go, and felt, he says, ‘instant regret, powerful, overwhelming. As I fell, all I wanted to do was reach back to the rail, but it was gone.’  He plummetted [sic] 220 feet in four seconds, going 75 miles per hour and wracked by the thought all the way down: What have I just done? I don’t want to die. God, please save me… He wants everyone to know that the act of suicide leads not to a final sense of satisfaction and relief but to panic-stricken sorrow.”  When I shot myself through the heart with a 9mm handgun in November of 1998, it was one of the most peaceful things of my life.  After I shot myself, I fell to the ground.  I reached out for someone to hold my hand because I did not want to die alone… but I still wanted to die.  I was not sorry I had shot myself.  I was not “hanging on to life.”  Laying there on the ground bleeding and gasping… in the 60 seconds before I passed, was very calm and peaceful.  This fact always scared most therapists from working with me afterwards.