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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico An investigation into three apparent suicides at the U-S prison at Guantanamo Bay may have uncovered a broader plot. According to court papers, a search of other detainees' cells after the three were found hanged turned up instructions on tying knots, along with several relevant notes in Arabic. The detention center's commander said in an affidavit investigators believe "the suicides may have been part of a larger plan or pact for more suicides that day or in the immediate future." Authorities say they confiscated personal papers from nearly all 450 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The government...

The results of two new studies may signal a substantial shift in the way psychiatrists and researchers think about treatment for severely depressed patients. --snip-- In the other, psychiatrists in New York found evidence that antidepressant drugs significantly increased the risk that some children and adolescents would attempt or commit suicide. Doctors have debated this risk for years, but the authors of the study were skeptical of it, and their report may sway others. --snip-- The study of suicide risk, led by Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, was based on an analysis...

WASHINGTON — President Bush expressed "serious concern" Saturday over the suicides at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay and directed an aggressive effort by his administration to reach out diplomatically while it investigates. "He wants to make sure that this thing is done right from all points of view," White House press secretary Tony Snow said Saturday evening. Bush, who is spending the weekend at Camp David, was notified at 7:45 a.m. EDT. Snow said it was during his daily intelligence briefing just afterward when the president voiced his concern over the incident and directed that the bodies be...

After analyzing data from clinical trials, GlaxoSmithKline has sent letters to doctors warning that its antidepressant drug Paxil appears to increase the risk of suicide attempts in some young adults. The company said it had changed the labeling on the drug to reflect the finding of the study, which analyzed clinical trial data involving some 15,000 people. The study found that reported suicide attempts were rare but significantly more common in adults who took the drug for depression than in those who received placebo pills. The Glaxo researchers reported only one suicide in the trials, a number so small it...

Antidepressant drugs raise the small risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior in depressed children and adolescents, scientists at the Food and Drug Administration are reporting today in a detailed published account of findings they reached in 2004. The study, an analysis of 4,582 patients in 24 drug trials, is the first widely published evaluation of data that the agency reviewed that year. The analysis found that about four children and adolescents of every 100 who took the drugs reported suicidal thoughts or behavior, twice the number among those who took dummy pills. The publication of the study is not likely...

The U.S. Supreme Court's rejection of the Bush administration's heavy-handed threats to prosecute Oregon physicians has revived the debate over whether California should allow doctors to help their terminally ill patients commit suicide. The fact that Oregon's law has survived the court challenge does not make physician-assisted suicide good public policy. It emphatically is not, for the simple reason that it exposes the most vulnerable members of society – the elderly, the disabled, the poor, the mentally impaired, the terminally ill – to unwarranted pressures to take their own lives because they are a financial burden on their families and...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A record number of convicts killed themselves in California prisons during 2005 - double the national inmate suicide rate, according to state records. The trend approaching one suicide each week is triggering new complaints from class-action lawyers that the state is stalling prevention efforts. Prison officials deny delays, saying they thwart the vast majority of suicide attempts. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported 44 suicides in an inmate population that is at an all-time high - nearly 164,000 - though inmates' attorneys have so far been able to confirm only 41 deaths as suicides. Either...

Statistics Canada recently reported that “gun deaths” have declined (Wilkins, 2005). The media love such factoids, but they are meaningless. What would you think if hospitals announced that “bed deaths” have decreased— or increased? Would that be very helpful in understanding health problems?1 Doctors would be embarrassed to use such a vague term. But not public health bureaucrats. It is time to stop using the term “gun deaths.” The term is being used to distract the reader from understanding what firearms have to do with homicide or suicide. “Gun deaths” is a pot pourri of suicides, homicides, and accidents. The...

Scientist at Work | David Healy His mother in Ireland is entirely unaware of his international reputation, as far as he can tell. His neighbors in the hamlet of Porthaethwy, on an island off the coast of Wales, are equally oblivious, or indifferent. His wife, who knows too well the furor he has caused, says simply, "How could you be right and everyone else wrong?" Dr. David Healy, a psychiatrist at the University of Cardiff and a vocal critic of his profession's overselling of psychiatric drugs, has achieved a rare kind of scientific celebrity: he is internationally known as both...

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR London ADOLESCENTS don't conceive the notion of strafing their classmates in a vacuum; they get the idea from cable TV. Bad news in itself, the 10-fatality reprise of the American school shooting last week at the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota bolsters the archetype. It makes a trend that had seemed to subside since Columbine in 1999 seem current again, and prospectively gives more boys big ideas. The lessons we've been meant to learn from school shootings have been legion. We need better gun control. We need to be more understanding of misfits. We need to stop...

Polaris Jeff Weise, whose rampage killed 10 people, took antidepressants. RED LAKE, Minn., March 25 - In their sleepless search for answers, the family of Jeff Weise, the teenager who killed nine people and then himself, says it is left wondering about the drugs he was prescribed for his waves of depression. On Friday, as Tammy Lussier prepared to bury Mr. Weise, who was her nephew, and her father, who was among those he killed, she found herself looking back over the last year, she said, when Mr. Weise began taking the antidepressant Prozac after a suicide attempt that...

The Marine Corps suffered a 29 percent spike in suicides last year, reaching the highest number in at least a decade, with the demanding pace of military operations likely contributing to the deaths, the top-ranking U.S. Marine said yesterday. Thirty-one Marines committed suicide in 2004, all of them enlisted men, not commissioned officers. The majority were younger than 25 and took their lives with gunshot wounds, according to Marine statistics. Another 83 Marines attempted suicide. There were 24 suicides in 2003, and there have not been more than 29 in any year in the last 10.

Golden Gate Bridge officials are seething that a moviemaker who told them he was working on a "day in the life" project about the landmark was, in fact, capturing people on film as they jumped to their deaths. Eric Steel initially told officials he planned to spend a year filming the "powerful and spectacular interaction between the monument and nature" and that his work was to be the first in a series of documentaries about national monuments such as the St. Louis Arch and the Statue of Liberty. That's how he got the Golden Gate National Recreation Area's permission to...

By Rick Rogers UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER December 21, 2004 More Marines are committing suicide than at any time since the Corps started closely monitoring such deaths, prompting the government to step up intervention efforts based on a clear message – set aside your pride and seek counseling. The challenges of preparing for deployment to Iraq, the stress of combat and the difficulties of returning to postwar life seem to drive up suicide numbers, some counselors and Marine generals said. To encourage more service members to seek treatment, the Defense Department has beefed up its mental-health units deployed overseas. It has...

EDITORIAL OBSERVER For devoted foes of gun control, September was a banner month. It opened with Congress ignoring pleas from every major national police group to let the hard-won 1994 ban on assault weapons expire, and ended last week with the House approving a loony measure repealing Washington's strict gun laws. And that's not all. In between reinstating every hunter's sacred Second Amendment right to nail Bambi with an AK-47, and mischievously meddling in local affairs to pass a one-chamber bill to weaken public safety in the nation's capital, the National Rifle Association and its busy-beaver allies quietly scored another...

BETHESDA, Md., Sept. 13 - Top officials of the Food and Drug Administration acknowledged for the first time on Monday that antidepressants appeared to lead some children and teenagers to become suicidal. Dr. Robert Temple, director of the F.D.A.'s office of medical policy, said after an emotional public hearing here that analyses of 15 clinical trials, some of which were hidden for years from the public by the drug companies that sponsored them, showed a consistent link with suicidal behavior. "I think that we now all believe that there is an increase in suicidal thinking and action that is consistent...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- The Army has acknowledged giving Congress incorrect information about use of an anti-malaria drug in units in which suicides occurred in Iraq last year. The Army's top medical official testified in February that no more than four of the deceased soldiers could have taken the drug, called Lariam, which the Food and Drug Administration says can cause mental problems. But the Army now says that number may be as high as 11 -- nearly half the total number of suicides the Army said occurred in Iraq during 2003. The Army says it stopped using Lariam,...

If you listen to media rhetoric, you get the notion that the more guns people own, the more crime there will be. More husbands shooting wives. More suicides by guns. More armed robberies. More homicides. Recently I viewed a 56-minute CD, "A Question of Balance," summarizing a World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities. The meeting was held May 1-2, 2003, at the Tower of London, and eight scholars presented data on firearms and crime. If more guns in the home lead to more crimes, then Switzerland would be the crime capital of the world. There, all men...

A top government scientist who concluded last year that most antidepressants are too dangerous for children because of a suicide risk wrote in a memo this week that a new study confirms his findings. The official, Dr. Andrew D. Mosholder, a senior epidemiologist at the Food and Drug Administration who assesses the safety of medicines, found last year that 22 studies showed that children given antidepressants were nearly twice as likely to become suicidal as those given placebos. His bosses, however, strongly disagreed with his findings, kept his recommendations secret and initiated a new analysis. In his memo, dated Monday,...

The number of suicides in Japan has risen to its highest level since records began. More than 34,000 Japanese took their own lives in 2003, according to the National Police Agency - an increase of more than 7% from the previous year. Three-quarters of those who committed suicide were male, and a third were aged over 60. Experts believe that health problems were the main reason, followed by economic pressures. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said there were no quick remedies for dealing with suicide, but his government would continue its efforts to improve the economic situation. Twenty-seven out of every...