A quote on suicide

"Man is the only animal who has to be encouraged to live."

Friedrich Nietzsche

Attitudes of doctors

From
http://www.cmj.slma.lk/cmj4501/17.htm
Silva, H. 2000, Suicide in Sri Lanka: points to ponder, Ceylon Medical
Journal

"
A significant proportion of all categories of health personnel expressed
non-sympathy towards parasuicide and alcoholic liver disease compared
with their attitudes to other illnesses. There was no significant
difference between the expressed personal and professional attitudes.
"

This may not happen in the UK but it's an interesting piece of attitudes
research. A meta-analysis that was published last year in the British
Journal of Psychiatry (or the year before) looked at quality of
healthcare and pre-existing diagnosis. It showed that there was evidence
to support the association between mental health diagnosis and poorer
quality of healthcare compared to physical illnesses in general. If I
remember the study right, and it's a while back, the authors considered
the effect may be based on symptoms but it turned out the biggest factor
was a pre-existing diagnosis. The paper considered the problem of
measuring quality of healthcare.

Alex J. Mitchell, Darren Malone, and Caroline Carney Doebbeling
Quality of medical care for people with and without comorbid mental illness and substance misuse: systematic review of comparative studies
The British Journal of Psychiatry, Jun 2009; 194: 491 - 499.

There are times I hate being me

LAst night I had a blowout of sorts. A minor one but the friends I was
with probably didn't understand why or what was going on. Frankly
neither did I.

We tried to get into a bar where my mate had been kicked out of earlier
n the week. He was talking to the bouncers to let him and somehow I
started ranting that he was a good person and why were they hassling
him. I don't know where that came from. They wouldn't let him in because
I was ranting so we all left.

I felt like a total shit for exploding like that. my mood collapsed
instantly internally so I left my friends and got a can of beer and then
went and huddled in a corner in a side street out of the light drinking
it while I wished I wasn't me.

I picked myself up and went home around 10:30 in the evening. Thankfully
I managed to find a shop that was open and get some food which I
actually managed to eat. My self-hate ends up with me being angry and I
remember throwing the chicken bones on the street. I hate littering.

I wish I didn't do this sort of stuff. There's a part of me that wants
to scream "it's not fair". I'm fighting the urge to withdraw further.

Photography equipment and penises

It's what you do with it that counts.

Stuff about taking lessons from what happens in Sri Lanka and applying it to the UK

I have no idea if this is a good observation or not based on the
evidence and personal experience.

In a paper I read about Sri Lanka it said the really high suicide rate
was due to the availability of high lethality methods and healthcare
systems not setup to treat suicide attempts. The author noted that the
suicide rate in men in the North of Sri Lanka slightly decreased during
the bitter and bloody civil war especially in young men, however I think
he said the suicide rate in women went up.

The annoying thing is I don't know if the suicide rate includes suicide
bombings. The LTTE (the guerrilla resistance movement based in the North
of Sri Lanka and nicknamed the Tamil Tigers).

Rationally most people would assume that a war would be pretty bad for
mental health. The Sri Lanka civil war was one of the most bitter
struggles in the late 20th century. When it ended last year there were
20,000 civilians trapped on a beach. They were effectively a human
shield between the Tiger's last stand and the advancing onslaught of the
Sri Lankan military. It was an ineffective human shield. The civilians
were bombarded by artillery fire and bombs. The opening scenes of Saving
Private Ryan might give an inkling as to what it was like on that beach,
a beach where a tsunami had hit a few Christmas's ago. It's the sort of
horror that can't really be treated by antidepressants.

Would you like to know what it's like there at the moment? Even though
80,000 Tamil civilians are still being illegally detained in government
camps, living in squalid conditions with the threat of execution if they
run and people 'disappearing' from the camps as well as reports of
torture and rape by the guards the mood of the people is also reported
to be good. Amongst the rubble and the fear their loved ones may never
return they have the joy of peace. It is something that we don't
remember in the West, what it feels like not to be at war. I would have
thought that would make anyone happy? But we're used to it. The Tamil
civilans are happy knowing they can finally buy a big TV one day,
because they'll never have to carry it when they have to flee from their
homes ever again. That's not a pleasure that's ever been felt in the UK.

The problem with my rambling mind is that I forget the point I was
trying to make and I've probably bored the reader by the time the get to
what I'm trying to say.

Some men are made for what a war provides. It gives them purpose and a
reason to live. It provides traditonal male role models. War is simple
and the answers are simple. I am not saying that this is a reason to be
at war, what I am saying is that understanding why the suicide rate in
young men in a civil war decreases while the suicide rate in women
increases could be applied to the suicide rate problem in young men in
the UK.

The French used to have a system at least in the films I've seen about
the Foreign Legion. It was an alternative to suicide and a culturally
acceptable one.

World mental health campaigning

I just had a thought that there needs to be more mental healthcare
campaigning in the developing world. Then I thought what an idiot I am.
There needs to be more mental health care campaigning from the
developing world to the 'developed' world.

Pressure cookers, mental health and the workplace

Many workplaces are not built for the mentally ill, even for those
taking medication to mask their symptoms.

The pressure cooker effect is something many people will have seen. It
is something that happens in many work environments, from the call
centres of middle England to the war zone of Afghanistan. Something
builds up till it explodes catastrophically when the steam of whatever
pent up emotion wasn't been processed is vented. It is a natural process
for some people but it is not acceptable in many workplaces.

I've seen it happen and it's happened to me.

The recent story about the slaughter in Cumbria by an individual who'd
been bottling up his problems resonated the idea of the pressure cooker
effect.

For the employer it can mean the loss of an employee without
understanding what happened. For the employee it can be harder.