Sleeplessness could be linked to increased risk of suicide?

LONDON (Reuters) – People who suffer chronic sleep problems are more likely to think about suicide or actually try to kill themselves, researchers said on Wednesday.

The more types of sleep disturbances a person had -- such as waking up too early, difficulty falling asleep or lying awake at night -- upped the odds of suicidal thoughts, planning a suicide, or attempting it, researchers told a conference.

"People with two or more sleep symptoms were 2.6 times more likely to report a suicide attempt than those without any insomnia complaints," Marcin Wojnar, a researcher at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and the Medical University of Poland, who led the study, said in a statement.

Read full article here

Places to Die: Mt. Mihara, Oshima, Japan

Mt. Mihara on Oshima Island in Japan is an active volcano in Japan which last erupted in 1986, but it is best known for a series of suicides which took place there in the 1930s. Although knowledge of this place & its suicides have been documented in the West, I believe that the story has not been told to enough people within its proper context. In 1933, while China & Japan were already waging war in the Second Sino-Japanese War a young student, aged twenty-four, named Meiko Ukei from Tokyo went with her friend Masako Tomita to the island of Oshima. When Meiko & Masako reached the island, they climbed to the top of Mt. Mihara. Meiko turned to her friend & stated that she would commit suicide there, as her body would be cremated & her ashes sent to the heavens. The volcano was active at the time, so in the extreme heat (1,200 - 2,200 F) Meiko's plans were successful, she was probably liquidated immediately upon contact. (Perhaps a friendly geologist would like to comment.)

Meiko made her friend promise to not tell another person of the events that would transpire, but poor Masako, who cannot be blamed for her indiscretion had to confide in another. Soon afterward, the suicide of Meiko was in the newspapers & talked about on the radio. The suicidal & the curious came to Mt. Mihara in droves, leading the government to eventually create barriers to deter further deaths. Before they were erected, upwards of 600 people took their lives by jumping into the lava & 1,200 attempted suicide but were (fortunately?) restrained. Speaking of the curious, the ferries to Oshima were packed with people wishing to witness the deaths. The ferry companies, although profitted large sums, did their part to thwart further suicide by denying one-way tickets. (I don't know how this would stop anyone who wanted to die though. Think about it.)

Was it a beautiful death that people wanted? Was it stress from the war or mere unhappiness in life? Mental disease? No one possesses definite answers, only subjective opinions about the events & what lures people to certain places to die.* However, suicide within the context of Japanese culture, which differs greatly from the Western perspective, does offer a clue as to why people would be more inclined to die. In most Western societies, suicide is seen as a deplorable act where one would pity or even despise the person for what they perceive as a self-indulgent act. In contrast in Japan, suicide was seen as beautiful, because the act of self-sacrifice is held as a worthy pursuit. That is not meant to distort the view that suicide was gleaned with happy smiles & celebrations, but the act of an individual doing this was not seen as harshly nor as negative as a typical Western audience would interpret it.+



*I will be featuring other 'Places to Die' at a later period.

+If I can find enough research that will adequately explain the differences, in depth, between Eastern & Western views of death, I will update this page with new material.


Sources:

1. Jamison, Kay Redfield. Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide. Vintage, New York: 2000, pp. 146-148.
   
2. Young, Jerome. Morals, Suicide, and Psychiatry: A View from Japan. Bioethics, Vol. 16, pp. 412-424, 2002. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=324646
3. http://wikitravel.org/en/Izu_Oshima
   

Suicide Note Generator

I found this funny website, which generates a suicide note for you. Eventually, I will get around to writing more about individual suicide notes, but for now I offer this one:

March 18, 2009

Dear Ungrateful World;

Although everyone on Earth has failed to give me even half the accolades and adulation that should go with me, Tracy, being the 3rd coming of christ, I will still fulfill my destiny. You're welcome.

For you insolent pukes, I will shed my blood to once again open the gates of heaven. Because of me, you heathen beasts won't have to endure any locust, floods, toads or ATF non-incendiary devices. Ingrate pricks.

So, start erecting statues, knocking out opponents, singing songs, scoring touchdowns, hitting home runs, hiding colored eggs every year around the 18th of March, and doing other shit for my glory because you fuckers owe me big.

Jesus Christ III
a.k.a. Tracy

P.S. You fucking cremate me and I'm going poltergeist on your ass.

Feel free to generate your own suicide note & post the link to it in the comments.
http://www.porkjerky.com/free/suicide.php

Iris Chang (March 28, 1968 – November 9, 2004)

Iris Chang
March 28, 1968 – November 9, 2004

As a student of history & a literature hound, Iris Chang's death in 2004 came as a shock. Though her work life was not without controversy, she seemed to be a very successful woman, driven by the need to share the dark corners of history with the world. Her work focused upon the Chinese in America & in mainland China, which as a Chinese-American herself (from immigrant parents) she was very equipped to help her whole audience understand the importance of the events she presented in her books, while forever attempting to give a strong voice to the mostly overlooked Chinese in the West.

Her most notable work was The Rape of Nanking which documented the Japanese genocidal atrocities, which led to the deaths of over 200,000 Chinese citizens. She was propelled into the spotlight, becoming a beacon for controversy for Japanese officials seeking to obscure the massacre, but more importantly the voice for those were lost & those who lived. What happened to make Iris Chang commit suicide? No one can say for certain, but towards the end of her life she was experiencing paranoid delusions about the government tracking her. She was briefly committed, but it seemed to have little effect in aiding any recovery.

What we do know about her death

1. Chang had been very depressed, she was searching online for suicide methods, plus she had read this book: Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying by Derek Humphry - Buy it here http://www.amazon.com/Final-Exit-Third-Practicalities-Self-Deliverance/dp/0385336535/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237103909&sr=8-1 or check it out from your local library. (I do not recommend you purchase it, as any information it contains will not be useful to those who want an easy death. It deals mainly with prescription drugs, which would be difficult for most people to obtain.)*

2. Chang used a replica Civil War gun to shoot herself, with one shot through the mouth while sitting in her car. She used a replica, because in CA, if you have been committed, you are restricted from buying any other type of gun than a replica. (Even when her mind was collapsing, the lady could still research!)

3. Chang left behind three suicide notes, which could imply that she had doubts about what she was going to do or as the perfectionist that she was, wanted to get the message perfectly clear. (See below.)

Iris Chang's suicide notes
The first note:

I promise to get up and get out of the house every morning. I will stop by to visit my parents then go for a long walk. I will follow the doctor's orders for medications. I promise not to hurt myself. I promise not to visit Web sites that talk about suicide.

The second note:

When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations and years. When you do not, you live not just by the day — but by the minute. It is far better that you remember me as I was — in my heyday as a best-selling author — than the wild-eyed wreck who returned from Louisville... Each breath is becoming difficult for me to take — the anxiety can be compared to drowning in an open sea. I know that my actions will transfer some of this pain to others, indeed those who love me the most. Please forgive me. Forgive me because I cannot forgive myself.

The third note:

There are aspects of my experience in Louisville that I will never understand. Deep down I suspect that you may have more answers about this than I do. I can never shake my belief that I was being recruited, and later persecuted, by forces more powerful than I could have imagined. Whether it was the CIA or some other organization I will never know. As long as I am alive, these forces will never stop hounding me.

Days before I left for Louisville I had a deep foreboding about my safety. I sensed suddenly threats to my own life: an eerie feeling that I was being followed in the streets, the white van parked outside my house, damaged mail arriving at my P.O. Box. I believe my detention at Norton Hospital was the government's attempt to discredit me.

I had considered running away, but I will never be able to escape from myself and my thoughts. I am doing this because I am too weak to withstand the years of pain and agony ahead.

After Iris Chang

The shock of Chang's death had led some to believe that she was not lying about the CIA's involvement in her life. Particularly to those, especially Asians, who witnessed the backlash she received upon publication of her book concerning the Nanking Massacre, believe that the government was involved in her murder. For some, there is no reason why a beautiful, intelligent woman with a loving family & thriving career would take her own life, so the pain of her death is replaced with anger towards an invisible enemy. (Some of her fans are discussing her death here, as a question to whether or not it was murder: http://bbs.chinadaily.com.cn/viewthread.php?tid=236193&page=1) Those of us who have studied the topic or experienced suicidal thoughts of our own will attest that success in life will never guarantee success in battling disease of the mind.

One work attempting to discover the real Iris Chang & why she committed suicide is Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition, and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind written by her friend Paula Kamen. It is a sincere effort, from someone who clearly wanted to get to the bottom of why her friend's life took this horrific turn. Kamen does not explicitly or implicitly state why Chang took her life, but she carefully & respectfully pealed away the layers of Chang's outwardly perfect life to reveal the shambles it lay in before she died. She did discuss the conspiracy theories briefly, but did not indulge in giving them any credibility. (OK one gripe I have, not concerning the book, is how Iris Chang's husband got engaged to & impregnated another woman less than a year after his wife died. Oh & she was Chinese-American & named Iris too. Is it impossible for men to deal with their grief without running into the arms of another woman? Are they not supposed to be the stronger sex according to tradition?)

UPDATE - 08/August/2013 - Since blog commentators were kind to point out the misinformation from Kamen's book, I'd like to apologize for what I wrote about Iris's husband Brett. I hope he (&his family) are leading a happy life. Thank you.


The Last Word

Personally, I will always remember sitting near the TV down the hall in my dorm & hearing how this woman, whose work I adored, had taken her life. I could not understand why she did it, but inherently I knew she had her reasons. The following day, I went to the library to rent a few of her books, but was disappointed to see that every book was out. When I did have the opportunity to reread them, I was reminded of her overwhelming talent for writing history. Her books are all very accessible, even to those without much of an interest in nonfiction & Asian(-American) history.


Links

• http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/17/CMGCNBQRRP1.DTL&type=books
• http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/arts/12chang.html

*I will be reviewing the book by Derek Humphry at a later date & include information about the Hemlock Society.

The Sorrows of Young Werther

If you haven't yet been acquainted with the Goethe, you should read this tale of romanticism gone afoul in The Sorrows of Young Werther. Love is usually considered a good & necessary element of life, but when Werther's beloved Lotte informs him of her engagement to Albert, it becomes a heavy burden upon his soul. If poor Werther had only been patient, perhaps the pain of his unrequited love with Lotte would have been dispelled.

Increasing your chances of death #1

We all know that suicide by medication is probably ideal for many people & normally, is more often the route of self-deliverance taken by women. What you may not know is that the chances of killing yourself by pills alone is very slim. In fact, statistically, it is not even worth the effort nor the high cost e.g. liver damage, expensive medication, shame of being found etc. Though it may be gruesome to imagine & hard for your loved ones (or the police & fire department) to find you in this state, by putting a plastic bag over your head you can increase your chances of a successful suicide by 10%.

This method is best followed immediately after you have taken your pills, but before you feel drowsy. If you happen to fall asleep before the bag is placed over your head, it is possible that you could wake up alive & in an extreme amount of pain. If this does happen, you should call 911 immediately & get to a hospital. You still run the risk of liver & organ damage, depending upon the medication, which could mean a more excruciating death (or life) than you had originally intended. Now, we wouldn't want all that effort to go to waste, especially not all those expensive pills, right?

Here are some tips to help you (or dissuade you) from SuicideMethods.net's chapter on asphyxia:

http://www.suicidemethods.net/text/halfofit.htm#chapasphyxia