Showing posts with label suicide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suicide. Show all posts
Thursday, October 25, 2018
What's Killing America's White Men? BBC News
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
LE POINT: Selon une source policière, la cathédrale a été évacuée peu après le coup de feu. L'homme, âgé de 78 ans, s'est tiré une balle dans la bouche.
Un homme, essayiste d'extrême droite, s'est suicidé avec une arme à feu mardi après-midi dans Notre-Dame de Paris, provoquant l'évacuation de la cathédrale, haut lieu touristique en plein coeur de Paris, a-t-on appris de sources policières et auprès de son éditeur. Cet homme, Dominique Venner, un essayiste de 78 ans apprécié des milieux nationalistes, s'est donné la mort devant l'autel peu après 16 heures à l'aide d'un pistolet à un coup de fabrication belge. Ancien militant de l'OAS, cet homme était une figure respectée au sein de la mouvance d'extrême droite.
La cathédrale a rapidement été évacuée mardi après-midi, sans incident, selon plusieurs sources, mais on ignorait peu avant 17 heures le nombre exact de personnes qui étaient concernées. Greg, un touriste américain venu de Phoenix dans l'Arizona, a expliqué que la cathédrale était pleine au moment du suicide, mais qu'il n'y a pas eu de mouvement de panique lors de l'évacuation de la cathédrale par les gardes en civil. Monseigneur Patrick Jacquin, recteur de la cathédrale, a précisé que le suicidé avait posé une lettre sur l'autel, dans le choeur, à l'attention des enquêteurs, avant son suicide.
Un surveillant a procédé à un massage cardiaque, en attendant l'arrivée des secours. Les enquêteurs ont trouvé sa carte d'identité sur lui. "On ne le connaissait pas, ce n'était pas un fidèle de la cathédrale", a expliqué monseigneur Jacquin, affirmant qu'à sa connaissance c'est la première fois qu'un suicide intervient à l'intérieur de la cathédrale. Toutes les messes ont été annulées jusqu'à 20 heures, lorsqu'une "veillée pour la vie" sera organisée avec les évêques d'Ile-de-France. "On va prier pour cet homme comme pour tant d'autres qui sont à bout", a ajouté monseigneur Jacquin. "C'est terrible, on pense à lui et à sa famille." » | LePoint.fr (avec AFP) | mardi 21 mai 2013
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Thursday, May 31, 2012
REUTERS.COM: Behind every suicide in crisis-stricken countries such as Greece there are up to 20 more people desperate enough to have tried to end their own lives.
And behind those attempted suicides, experts say there are thousands of hidden cases of mental illness, like depression, alcohol abuse and anxiety disorder, that never make the news, but have large and potentially long-lasting human costs.
The risk, according to some public health experts, is that if and when Greece's economic woes are over, a legacy of mental illness could remain in a generation of young people damaged by too many years of life without hope.
"Austerity can turn a crisis into an epidemic," said David Stuckler, a sociologist at Britain's Cambridge University who has been studying the health impacts of biting budget cuts in Europe as the euro crisis lurches on.
"Job loss can lead to an accumulation of risks that can tip people into depression and severe mental illness which can be difficult to reverse - especially if people are not getting appropriate care," Stuckler said.
"Untreated mental illness, just like other forms of illness, can escalate and develop into a problem that is much more difficult to treat later on." » | Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent | Reuters | LONDON | Thursday, May 31, 2012
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The 61-year-old electrician and father of two, identified only by the name Alexandros, had owed money to banks and the tax office that he was unable to repay, according to police.
Greece, which used to have one of the lowest suicide rates in the world, has seen a surge of people taking their own lives since it was plunged into the euro zone's worst economic crisis. Experts say the suicide rate probably doubled last year.
In his anguished suicide note he wrote that he always worked hard but had become a businessman late in life and had got himself into debt.
"I hope my grandchildren will never be born in Greece because from now on it won't be populated by Greeks any more," he wrote, according to the police sources.
"At least they will know a foreign language as Greek will be abolished by then unless there is a politician with balls, like Thatcher's, to fix both us and the state," he wrote. » | Source: agencies | Thursday, May 31, 2012
Friday, April 06, 2012
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Until Wednesday morning, Dimitris Christoulas, a respectable middle-class pensioner, was familiar only to the residents of the quiet Ampelokipous district of Athens where he had lived and worked hard for nearly 40 years.
All that changed at 8.45am, rush hour, when the 77-year-old former pharmacist and pillar of his shopkeeping community put a hand gun to his head and shot himself under a giant Cyprus tree on the central Syntagma Square.
He fell to the ground in front of the national parliament that many Greeks have come to blame for the corruption and mismanagement that has plunged their country into crisis, and lay there dead as shocked commuters looked on.
Yesterday, 24 hours after his suicide, the name Dimitris Christoulas is known to most in this troubled country.
"A martyr for Greece" declared the Eleftheros Typos newspaper. "Scream of desperation" said the headline in Avyi next to a picture of Edvard Munch's celebrated painting. Many press commentaries compared his death to the protest suicides that unleashed the Arab spring in Tunisia and across the Middle East last year.
To many – including neighbours in hi close community, he has become a hero.
"He did not rebel from his couch. He was a beautiful man, he will live on in history," said Pannayotta, a housewife in her late 50s, living on the same street as the pensioner.
The incendiary suicide note Mr Chritoulas left behind urging young Greeks to rise up has also struck a chord with millions of people who see their highly indebted nation's social fabric being torn apart by economic recession and externally imposed austerity measures.
"I cannot find any other form of struggle except a dignified end," he wrote. "I believe that young people with no future will one day take up and hang this country's traitors in arms in Syntagma Square just as the Italians hanged Mussolini in 1945." Read on and comment » | Bruno Waterfield | Athens | Thursday, April 05, 2012
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Monday, February 27, 2012
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: The recent bail-out, which imposes strict new austerity measures on the Greeks, will deepen a crisis that has already driven up the suicide rate by 40 per cent. David Blair reports from Athens on a nation that eyes the future without hope.
If popular protest in the graffiti-stained heart of Athens is the most obvious sign of Greece’s burgeoning crisis, a handful of volunteers gathered inside a suburban office provides a quieter, but no less painful, symbol of the country’s agony. These restrained, dedicated people meet in the modest headquarters of Klimaka, a mental health and social integration charity serving as Greece’s version of the Samaritans.
In a country where suicide is so vehemently stigmatised that it amounts to the social problem that dare not speak its name, a specialised telephone service offering counselling to those in despair began as recently as 2007. Today, the psychiatrists and psychologists who answer whenever someone dials “1018” are busier than ever. As the national economic crisis has worsened, so the volume of calls has grown.
In 2010, the service spoke to 2,500 people judged to be contemplating suicide. Last year, Greece’s first euro bail-out failed and the country’s unemployment rate rose by half in the space of 12 months, climbing from 13.9 to 20.9 per cent. As more and more people confronted redundancy and destitution, the plaintive calls to Klimaka more than doubled: 5,500 people thought to be at serious risk rang in 2011.
Today , the German parliament will vote on whether to endorse a second bail-out that was agreed by eurozone finance ministers last week on condition that Greece implements some of the harshest austerity measures ever imposed on a Western democracy. After five years of recession, Greece must now endure almost a decade of further economic self-flagellation in order to reduce its national debt from 160 per cent of gross domestic product to 120.5 per cent in 2020. That is the language of Brussels communiqués and central bankers; but the true voice of economic crisis is heard by Klimaka’s volunteers every day. » | David Blair | Sunday, February 26, 2012
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Thursday, January 06, 2011
THE INDEPENDENT: The suicide of Alireza Pahlavi, the youngest son of the former Shah of Iran, is a reminder of the futility of the dream that one day the royal family may be restoredWhatever it was that sustained Alireza Pahlavi – his money, perhaps, his good looks or even a lingering nostalgia for luxuries and status lost – it ran out this week. With a single squeeze of the trigger, the youngest son of the former Shah of Iran, aged 44 and living in a well-to-do corner of Boston, took his own life on Tuesday.
Neighbours in the South End district of Boston won't miss him much, even if they liked to gossip about his royal lineage every once in a while. Almost no one knew the man who always looked debonair in pressed jeans and a blazer, climbing from his Porsche before disappearing into his brownstone home, its windows obscured by interior shutters.
That he generated pavement chit-chat was hardly surprising. He was different. He had been raised as the second in line to the ancient Peacock Throne of Persia, accustomed once to unimaginable privilege. As an adult in Boston he seemed accomplished – he attended Ivy League universities – and had once been touted as the city's most eligible bachelor. But to wonder at the man and his pedigree was to ignore the demons burrowed inside. >>> David Usborne | Thursday, January 06, 2011
BBC NEWS MIDDLE EAST: The younger son if the Shah of Iran, Alireza Pahlavi, was "extremely affected" by his family's exile, former Iranian minister Mahnaz Afkhami says.
Alireza Pahlavi killed himself in the US after a long battle with depression.
Ms Afkhami, who was minister for women's affairs during the Pahlavi era, told the BBC World Service that the fall of the Shah was a "traumatic experience" for Alireza, who was 13 years when his father fled the country in 1979. Listen to BBC audio >>> | Wednesday, January 05, 2011
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Wednesday, January 05, 2011
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Prince Alireza Pahlavi, the youngest son of the late Shah of Iran, has been found dead after committing suicide in the United States, according to his family.
The prince, 44, who had been studying at Harvard University, killed himself in his home in Boston, his family said on Tuesday.
Prince Reza Pahlavi, his older brother, said Prince Alireza had been downhearted due to political developments in Iran over recent years and at the loss of other relatives.
"Like millions of young Iranians, he too was deeply disturbed by all the ills fallen upon his beloved homeland, as well as carrying the burden of losing a father and a sister in his young life," he said.
The prince was studying for a postgraduate degree in philology and ancient Iranian studies. He had already obtained degrees from Princeton and Columbia universities. >>> Jon Swaine, New York | Tuesday, January 04, 2011
ABC NEWS / US: Son of Former Iranian Shah Found Dead in Boston: Former Iranian prince, youngest son of ousted shah, found dead of apparent suicide in Boston >>> Denise LaVoie, Associated press | Tuesday, January 04, 2011
MAIL ONLINE: The youngest son of the Shah of Iran has killed himself after a long battle with depression - following his model sister who also took her own life.
Tormented by his sister’s death and the upheaval in his native country, Alireza Pahlavi, 44, shot himself in the head at his home in Boston, where he was studying at Harvard University.
His brother, former crown price Reza Pahlavi, said the family was in ‘great sorrow’ over the tragedy.
A family statement confirmed: ‘It is with immense grief that we would like to inform our compatriots of the passing away of Prince Alireza Pahlavi.
‘Like millions of young Iranians, he too was deeply disturbed by all the ills fallen upon his beloved homeland, as well as carrying the burden of losing a father and a sister in his young life.
‘Although he struggled for years to overcome his sorrow, he finally succumbed.’ >>> David Gardner | Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Sunday, June 20, 2010
MAIL ONLINE: The Commons expenses scandal has been blamed for an apparent suicide attempt by Tory MP David Ruffley, who threw himself under a train.
Former Shadow Police Minister Mr Ruffley, 48, jumped in front of an express train at London’s Victoria station during the evening rush-hour on Thursday.
The MP for Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk survived after the train passed right over him and he missed the live rail.
Mr Ruffley, one of the most popular MPs at Westminster, was among those who came under heavy criticism over his Commons expenses. >>> Simon Walters | Saturday, June 19, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
THE GUARDIAN: Inquest records suicide verdict and finds fashion designer killed himself while balance of mind was disturbed
The fashion designer Alexander McQueen, who was struggling with depression and the death of his mother, hanged himself earlier this year after taking cocaine, sleeping pills and tranquillisers, an inquest heard today.
Recording a verdict of suicide, the Westminster coroner, Dr Paul Knapman, said: "It's such a pity for a man who, from a modest start, climbed to the top of his profession only to die in such tragedy."
Knapman concluded that the 40-year-old designer, whose full name was Lee Alexander McQueen, "killed himself while the balance of his mind was disturbed". >>> Sam Jones | Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Related link here
Friday, February 19, 2010
20MINUTES.ch: Un salarié de France Télécom s'est suicidé le week-end dernier à son domicile, ce qui porte à six le nombre de suicides dans l'entreprise depuis le début de l'année, a-t-on appris vendredi auprès de la société.
Ce dessinateur-projeteur de 53 ans était en congé maladie, a indiqué un porte-parole. Un phénomène de suicides a fait selon le direction de la société 32 morts en 2008 et 2009 à France Télécom, ancienne administration d'Etat devenue société anonyme en 1996. Les syndicats avancent des bilans plus lourds. >>> ats | Vendredi 19 Février 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: A pilot set fire to his house and then committed suicide by flying his small plane into a tax office in Texas.
Joseph Stack left a six-page suicide note in which he railed against the Internal Revenue Service, the US federal tax agency.
He wrote: "I am finally ready to end this insanity. Well, Mr Big Brother IRS man let's try something different. Take my pound of flesh and sleep well.
"There was a storm raging inside me. Desperate times call for desperate measures. We are brainwashed to believe there is freedom in this land."
In his suicide "manifesto," which he posted on his own website, Stack also railed against Wall Street bankers, the Catholic Church, President George W Bush and the health care system. >>> Nick Allen in Los Angeles | Thursday, February 18, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: In his long, rambling suicide note Joseph Stack painted himself as a hard working American who was being exploited by a corrupt establishment and forced to hand over his retirement money in taxes.
Stack complained that anyone who stood up for the principal of "no taxation without representation" was now labelled a "crackpot." He accused corporate leaders of being "thugs and plunderers" guilty of "gluttony and overwhelming stupidity" and politicians were "thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags."
He said the US health system was a "joke" and accused drug companies of "murdering tens of thousands of people a year" but his strongest words were reserved for the tax system.
Stack said: "Here we have a system that is, by far, too complicated for the brightest of the master scholars to understand.
"The law requires a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing. If that's not duress then what is. If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is." >>> Nick Allen in Los Angeles | Thursday, February 18, 2010
Friday, August 28, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: Beneath its idyllic exterior, Martha's Vineyard – beloved holiday destination of America's well-heeled – is rife with depression, alcoholism, drug abuse and domestic violence.
America's First Family will wave goodbye to Martha's Vineyard tomorrow after a week's holiday on an island whose name is rarely uttered without the epithet "idyllic".
As President Obama flies his family back home to Washington, they will rapidly be followed by an armada of private jets from the tiny local airport. After next weekend's Labour Day holiday, the exodus of billionaire businessmen, media tycoons and Hollywood stars who summer on the island will be complete. From Oprah Winfrey and Beyonce to Valerie Jarrett and the Clintons, they'll all be gone. In a matter of days, the island's population withers from 100,000 to just 15,000.
More than a few of the quitters must feel a twinge of jealousy for those lucky few left behind on the 23-mile island. They shouldn't. The reality of out-of-season – and that in holiday-starved America means any month outside July and August – is anything but a paradise for most of those left behind.
Martha's Vineyard's dark little secret is one of desperately high levels of depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence and even suicide attempts among a population that struggles to make ends meet in a billionaire's playground when the billionaires have all left.
The last time the island's social problems were publicly totted up – in 2005 - the number of cases of patients treated each year in hospital for alcohol or drug abuse had soared from almost 200 in 2002 to just over 750 three years later. The caseload of patients struggling with depression had grown from 40 in 2002 to 92 in 2005. Suicide attempts climbed almost tenfold, from three in 2002 to 29 in 2005.
Some local experts believe the situation has not got any better. "It's the shadow side of Martha's Vineyard – all the things you don't expect to exist on a luxury island," said Dr Gail Gordon, its former community services senior psychologist. "And it's the seasonal nature of the island that makes our social problems worse. Everyone works so hard over the summer and then there's this let down when all the others go." >>> Tom Leonard | Friday, August 28, 2009
Monday, January 21, 2008
DAILY MAIL: A Saudi woman is appealing to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah to reunite her with the husband she loves after her relatives went behind her back to seek a divorce on the grounds she had married beneath her.
Two years ago, a knock on Fatima and Mansour al-Timani's door shattered the life they had built together. It was the police, delivering news that a judge had annulled their marriage in absentia, thanks to her relatives' efforts.
Under Saudi Arabia's strict segregation rules that means the couple can no longer live together. They sued to reverse the ruling, publicised their story and sought help from a Saudi human rights group.
But, after a spell in jail - for living together illegally - the two remain apart and Fatima is considering suicide, she said, if her recent appeal to King Abdullah doesn't reunite her with the man she still considers her husband.
"I want to return to my husband, but if that is not possible, I need to know so I can put an end to my life," she said. Saudi woman considering suicide after family go behind her back to divorce her from man she loves >>>
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