Suicides and Suicide Attempts

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    Does Your School Use Suicide Prevention Software? We Want to Hear From You.

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    Concerned about anxiety and depression among students, some schools are monitoring what children type into their devices to detect suicidal thinking or self-harm.In response to the youth mental health crisis, many school districts are investing in software that monitors what students type on their school devices, alerting counselors if a child appears to be contemplating suicide or self-harm.Such tools — produced by companies like Gaggle, GoGuardian Beacon, Bark and Securly — can pick up what a child types into a Google search, or a school essay, or an email or text message to a friend. Some of these alerts may be false alarms, set off by innocuous research projects or offhand comments, but the most serious alerts may prompt calls to parents or even home visits by school staff members or law enforcement.I write about mental health for The New York Times, including the effects of social media use on children’s brains and algorithms that predict who is at risk for suicide. I’m interested in knowing more about how these monitoring tools are working in real life.If you are a student, parent, teacher or school administrator, I’d like to hear about your experiences. Do you think these tools have saved lives? Do they help students who are anxious or depressed get the care they need? Are you concerned about students’ privacy? Is there any cost to false positives?I will read each submission and may use your contact information to follow up with you. I will not publish any details you share without contacting you and verifying your information.If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.Share Your Experiences with Suicide Prevention Software More

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      Army Sees No Link to Blast Exposure in Maine Gunman’s Mental Issues

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      Investigators found lapses in the handling of a troubled reservist who went on to kill 18 people, but they rejected suggestions that his Army work had damaged his brain.An Army investigation into the October 2023 mass shooting committed by an Army Reserve soldier, Robert Card II, found that a number of factors contributed to the Army’s inaction as Mr. Card’s mental health careened toward violence, including procedural breakdowns, missteps by commanders and rules that restrict military authority over reserve soldiers when they are out of uniform.But the report said the Army saw no link between his mental health problems and the years he spent working as a grenade instructor, repeatedly exposed to explosions on the practice range.Every summer for eight years, Mr. Card taught cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to use heavy weapons, including machine guns and shoulder-fired anti-tank guns. For five of those years, he worked on the grenade range, where about 2,400 grenades exploded over a two-week period. By age 40, he wore hearing aids.Last July, he was supposed to run machine-gun training for cadets, despite having missed a mandatory training session in the spring, the report said. But he was behaving so erratically in July that his Army Reserve commander had him hospitalized at a civilian psychiatric hospital in New York.Lt. Gen. Jody J. Daniels said the blasts Robert Card II had experienced in his Army Reserve service were “relatively minor.” The general administered an oath to new service members at a football game in 2022.Julio Cortez/Associated PressThe hospital determined that Mr. Card was experiencing psychosis and homicidal thoughts and had a “hit list.” Doctors moved to commit the soldier involuntarily for treatment, but the effort was dropped by the hospital under what the Army report called “questionable circumstances,” and Mr. Card was released after 19 days.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why We Are All Afraid of Ourselves

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      Being you can be a painful and scary thing. And that’s OK.This essay is part of a series called The Big Ideas, in which writers respond to a single question: What do we fear? You can read more by visiting The Big Ideas series page.I knew I was not in my own bed. I was afraid to open my eyes. There was no blanket on me, and I was in my clothes, but with no shoes. I could hear yelling and echoes. The hangover was still coiled somewhere deep in the spot where the neck meets the skull.I could tell I wasn’t in a hospital. Men shouted and someone was crying. I was keeping my eyes shut, and I tried to find the last memory of the night before. Drinks with other faculty members at the Rockhill, and then … nothing.I’d been dreaming of a car crash before I woke. Then I realized my chest, my chin and my arm were sore, and it hit me: I’d been in a wreck, in real life. I sat upright and looked around.It was a jail, all right. I got out of bed and, in a state of physical, trembling panic, went to find someone who could tell me what I’d done. On the far side of the common area, at a desk elevated above the floor, like the judge in Kafka’s “The Trial,” a guard sat behind a plexiglass screen.I stood there. The guard ignored me. The desk was at about the same level as my face. I looked up at him.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Widening Racial Disparities Underlie Rise in Child Deaths in the U.S.

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      New research finds that the death rate among Black youths soared by 37 percent, and among Native American youths by 22 percent, between 2014 and 2020, compared with less than 5 percent for white youths.The NewsThanks to advancements in medicine and insurance, mortality rates for children in the United States had been shrinking for decades. But last year, researchers uncovered a worrisome reversal: The child death rate was rising.Now, they have taken their analysis a step further. A new study, published Saturday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, revealed growing disparities in child death rates across racial and ethnic groups. Black and Native American youths ages 1 to 19 died at significantly higher rates than white youths — predominantly from injuries such as car accidents, homicides and suicides.Dr. Coleen Cunningham, chair of pediatrics at the University of California, Irvine, and the pediatrician in chief at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, who was not involved in the study, said the detailed analysis of the disparities documented “a sad and growing American tragedy.”“Almost all are preventable,” she said, “if we make it a priority.”Flowers for Karon Blake, 13, who was shot and killed in Washington, D.C., in January 2023. Gun-related deaths were two to four times higher among Black and Native American youth than among white youth.Carolyn Kaster/Associated PressSome Context: A frightening trend examined more closely.Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University and Children’s Hospital of Richmond had previously revealed that mortality rates among children and adolescents had risen by 18 percent between 2019 and 2021. Deaths related to injuries had grown so dramatically that they eclipsed all public health gains.The group, seeking to drill deeper into the worrying trend, obtained death certificate data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s public WONDER database and stratified it by race, ethnicity and cause for children ages 1 to 19. They found that Black and American Indian/Alaska Native children were not only dying at significantly higher rates than white children but that the disparities — which had been improving until 2013 — were widening.The data also revealed that while the mortality rates for children overall took a turn for the worse around 2020, the rates for Black, Native American and Hispanic children had begun increasing much earlier, around 2014.Between 2014 and 2020, the death rates for Black children and teenagers rose by about 37 percent, and for Native American youths by about by about 22 percent — compared with less than 5 percent for white youths.“We knew we would find disparities, but certainly not this large,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, a professor of family medicine at the V.C.U. School of Medicine, who worked on the research. “We were shocked.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hudson Yards ‘Vessel’ Sculpture Will Reopen With Netting After Suicides

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      The 150-foot-high tourist attraction, which closed in 2021, will be fitted with stop people from jumping.Nearly three years after a series of suicides shut down the Vessel, the 150-foot-tall centerpiece of the Hudson Yards complex in Manhattan, the project’s developer said on Friday that it would reopen this year with new safety measures.The beehive-shaped sculpture, with a labyrinth of about 2,500 steps and 80 landings, opened in 2019, along with much of the rest of Hudson Yards, a gleaming development in Midtown West. Not long after, in February 2020, a 19-year-old, Peter DeSalvo III, died by suicide there.Over the next year and a half, three others died by suicide there as well, including a 14-year-old boy in 2021, prompting the developers to close off access to the stairs.The attraction will reopen once “floor-to-ceiling steel mesh” has been installed on several staircases, said Kathleen Corless, a spokeswoman for Related Companies, the developer of Hudson Yards. The measure will preserve the “unique experience that has drawn millions of visitors from around the globe,” the company said in a statement.The reopening, first reported by The New York Post, will take place sometime this year.On Saturday morning, tourists craned their necks against the chilly wind to take in views of the massive, brassy art piece. Although it was still closed, a careful look at its third floor showed an initial section of the upcoming changes: black mesh, resembling a fish net.Simon Pierre, 37, a high school teacher visiting from Montreal, said it reminded him of factories in China where the owners installed nets after a wave of suicides. “It’s sad that it’s needed,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lifelong ‘Star Trek’ Fan Leaves Behind a Massive Trove of Memorabilia

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      Troy Nelson and his younger brother Andrew were almost inseparable.The two youngest of six, they were born two years apart. They lived together in their childhood home in Bremerton, Wash., for more than half a century. Near their home, there is a park bench on which they carved their initials as young boys.The Nelson brothers never married or had children. They worked together at the same senior home. They even once, as teenagers, dated the same girl at the same time while working different shifts at the same pizza shop. This lasted a week until they realized it.“Two parts of one body,” Evan Browne, their older sister, said of their relationship in an interview.On Feb. 28, Andrew Nelson, who had been treated for cancer for years, went to feed the chickens and ducks that were gifts from Ms. Browne to her brothers. He had a heart attack and died. He was 55. Just hours later, Troy Nelson, who was stricken with grief, took his own life. He was 57.“He had talked about it before,” Browne, 66, said, tearfully. “He said, ‘Hey, if Andrew goes, I’m out of here. I’m checking out.’ Andrew would say the same thing, and then it really happened.”The collection of “Star Trek” memorabilia left by Mr. Nelson is among the largest known, according to the president of a nonprofit that focuses on the franchise.Connie Aramaki for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Psychedelic Evangelist

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      Before he died last year, Roland Griffiths was arguably the world’s most famous psychedelics researcher. Since 2006, his work has suggested that psilocybin, found in magic mushrooms, can induce mystical experiences, and that those experiences, in turn, can help treat anxiety, depression, addiction and the terror of death.Dr. Griffiths and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins University received widespread recognition among scientists and the popular press, helping to pull the psychedelic field from the deep backwater of the 1960s hippie movement. This second wave of research on the hallucinogenic compounds bolstered political campaigns to decriminalize them and spurred biotech investment.Dr. Griffiths was known to friends and colleagues as an analytical thinker and a religious agnostic, and he warned fellow researchers against hype. But he also saw psychedelics as more than mere medicines: Understanding them could be “critical to the survival of the human species,” he said in one talk. Late in life, he admitted to taking psychedelics himself, and said he wanted science to help unlock their transformative power for humanity.Perhaps unsurprisingly, he held a vaunted, even prophetic role among psychonauts, the growing community of psychedelic believers who want to bring the drugs into mainstream society. For years, critics have denounced the outsize financial and philosophical influence of these advocates on the insular research field. And some researchers have quietly questioned whether Dr. Griffiths, in his focus on the mystical realm, made some of the same mistakes that doomed the previous era of psychedelic science.Now, one of his longtime collaborators is airing a more forceful critique. “Dr. Griffiths has run his psychedelic studies more like a ‘new-age’ retreat center, for lack of a better term, than a clinical research laboratory,” reads an ethics complaint filed to Johns Hopkins last fall by Matthew Johnson, who worked with Dr. Griffiths for nearly 20 years but resigned after a charged dispute with colleagues.Roland Griffiths, director of the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins, in 2021.Matt Roth for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A K-Pop Star’s Lonely Downward Spiral

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      Goo Hara’s life was a struggle from the start. She ended it at 28, isolated and harassed online.The K-pop star looked utterly drained. Her face scrubbed of makeup, Goo Hara, one of South Korea’s most popular musical artists, gazed into the camera during an Instagram livestream from a hotel room in Japan. In a fading voice, she read questions from fans watching from around the world.“You going to work, fighting?” one asked.In halting English, she gave a plaintive answer: “My life is always so fighting.”By the time she climbed into bed at the end of the livestream in November 2019, she had reached a low point after a lifetime of struggle. As a child, she was abandoned by her parents. Her father at one point attempted suicide. After grueling training, she debuted in a K-pop group at 17, early even by the standards of the Korean hit-making machine.With the group, Kara, she found international fame, and Ms. Goo became a regular on Korean television, eventually anchoring her own reality series. But with celebrity came ravenous attacks on social media from a Korean public that is as quick to criticize stars as it is to fawn over them. Following a sordid legal fight with an ex-boyfriend, the harassment only intensified, as commenters criticized her looks, her personality and her sex life.Ms. Goo in 2018, the year before she died by suicide.Choi Soo-Young/Imazins, via Getty ImagesOn Nov. 23, 2019, less than a week after her Instagram appearance, she posted a photo of herself tucked in bed, with the caption “Good night.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Sunday Read: ‘The Unthinkable Mental Health Crisis That Shook a New England College’

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      Adrienne Hurst and Rowan Niemisto and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | SpotifyThe first death happened before the academic year began. In July 2021, an undergraduate student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute was reported dead. The administration sent a notice out over email, with the familiar, thoroughly vetted phrasing and appended resources. Katherine Foo, an assistant professor in the department of integrative and global studies, felt especially crushed by the news. She taught this student. He was Chinese, and she felt connected to the particular set of pressures he faced. She read through old, anonymous course evaluations, looking for any sign she might have missed. But she was unsure where to put her personal feelings about a loss suffered in this professional context.The week before the academic year began, a second student died. A rising senior in the computer-science department who loved horticulture took his own life. This brought an intimation of disaster. One student suicide is a tragedy; two might be the beginning of a cluster. Some faculty members began to feel a tinge of dread when they stepped onto campus.Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts is a tidy New England college campus with the high-saturation landscaping typical of well-funded institutions. The hedges are beautifully trimmed, the pathways are swept clean. Red-brick buildings from the 19th century fraternize with high glass facades and renovated interiors. But over a six-month period, the school was turned upside down by a spate of suicides.There are a lot of ways to listen to ‘The Daily.’ Here’s how.We want to hear from you. Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at thedaily@nytimes.com. Follow Michael Barbaro on X: @mikiebarb. And if you’re interested in advertising with The Daily, write to us at thedaily-ads@nytimes.com.Additional production for The Sunday Read was contributed by Isabella Anderson, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Elena Hecht, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez and Krish Seenivasan. More