My sister's letter...... I am a pathological liar. I lie to everyone around me. I say I have friends, that I am busy, happy, nice, smart. The person I lie to the most is me. I tell myself that I'm worth something and that I prefer not to have anyone who likes me. Everyone leaves a room I enter. People stop talking when I get close. When I say something it is ignored or made fun of. In less than a day I can go from bouncing off the walls to don't even want to move. Sometimes I go entire weeks where having no one who wants me around doesn't…

  Outpatient involuntary treatment needs to be considered. Published on December 17, 2012 by Dr. Nassir Ghaemi in Mood Swings A mentally ill young male kills innocents. He had struggled with – fill in the blank mental illness (autism, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia) – and did not receive treatment, or did not agree to treatment, or did not respond to treatment. He and his family tried to get help, but failed, and eventually his family gave up. The young man became a loner, living quietly on the margins of society, until, one day, he had enough and decided to kill himself. Like suicide-by-cop, he decided to kill himself by killing…

Suicide Behavior to Be Included as a DSM-5 Diagnosis Paul King, MD Parkwood Behavioral Health System, Olive Branch, Mississippi The DSM-5 Mood Disorders Work Group is looking into including suicide behavioral disorder (SBD) in the forthcoming DSM-5.1 The goal of including this diagnosis is to increase awareness of the need to improve clinicians’ ability to recognize risk factors for suicide.

Predictors of Psychiatric Inpatient Suicide: A National Prospective Register-Based Study Objective: To study the incidence and risk factors of psychiatric inpatient suicide within a national cohort representing all psychiatric hospital admissions. Method: This national prospective register-based study followed all psychiatric hospital admissions in Denmark from the date of patient admission until patient discharge or inpatient suicide over a 10-year study period from 1997 through 2006.

By Rebecca A. Clay College can be a stressful time, and the numbers bear that out. The American College Health Association’s 2006 National College Health Assessment found that 94 percent of the college and university students surveyed reported that they felt overwhelmed by everything they had to do. Forty-four percent confessed that they had felt so depressed it was difficult to function. And 18 percent had a depressive disorder. According to SAMHSA’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health, in 2008, young adults age 18 to 25 were more likely than adults age 26 to 49 to have had serious thoughts of suicide (6.7 percent vs. 3.9 percent).

May 12, 2011 — Geographical areas with higher natural lithium concentrations in the drinking water have lower mortality rates from suicide, according to new research published in the May issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry. The finding, similar to that from 3 different countries on different continents, adds to the evidence that lithium in the drinking water may have beneficial effects for mental health, Nestor D. Kapusta, MD, from the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, and colleagues write. “This should stimulate further research in low-level effects of lithium,” Dr. Kapusta told Medscape Medical News. “We know much about therapeutic levels — 450 to 900 mg of lithium carbonate per…