The Rise in Suicide and an Epidemic of Loneliness

From Karol Markowicz, at the New York Post, "Soaring suicides are another sign of our toxic social disconnect":

Opinion: Soaring suicides are another sign of our toxic social disconnect https://t.co/7zeJa1q7Zy pic.twitter.com/Kun7wkhtCs

— New York Post (@nypost) December 18, 2018

Americans are dying — earlier than they have been and often at their own hands.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2017 tally, there has been a dramatic rise in the numbers of US deaths by suicide and drug overdose.

As Tamar Lapin noted in these pages, “The last time the US experienced this long of a general decline in life expectancy was in the late 1910s, when the Spanish influenza and World War I killed nearly 1 million Americans.” This time we’re doing it to ourselves.

Suicide is hard to combat. Often there are no signs. It’s quiet and hidden until its devastation is out in the open. There is rarely a particular cause to blame. Two recent cases highlight the bedeviling ­nature of the problem.


“SNL” star Pete Davidson gave the world a scare over the weekend with a cryptic Instagram post in which he said: “I really don’t want to be on this earth anymore.”

Davidson has received an outpouring of support and been accounted for. Not so for Jessica Starr. Last week, the 35-year-old Detroit meteorologist took her own life. A successful TV journalist and mother of two decided she couldn’t live anymore. It could happen to anyone — and it does.

The spike in the number of people taking their own lives is a public-health emergency. It’s something we have to combat — and not just when the victims are famous.

After high-profile suicides, like those of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade, we’re bombarded with stories about how to detect the signs of someone in trouble and how to help. But we need to be doing more on a regular basis to support those around us who are struggling.

One wider issue is that Americans have lost the ability to cope. The power to persevere and go on is an important one to develop. It helps to have people to turn to in times of trouble.

But many Americans are bereft of people to lean on. The demise of tight-knit communities has had a profound effect on us. We’re increasingly living our lives on the Internet, alone amid vast digital crowds. Social media have replaced socializing. We’re all guilty of staring too often at our phones. We curl up at night with the latest Chrome browser.

The loneliness is killing us...

Still more.

Anthony Bourdain Heartbroken After Split from Asia Argento?

I know, from having my heart broken too many times, if there's one sure thing to drive a man over the cliff it's the rejection of a beautiful woman. And Bourdain had problems before. He'd been a heroin addict at one point.

The Other McCain tweeted the other day:

Bourdain had a history of serious drug abuse. He was divorced twice, and had just been dumped by his girlfriend. Stop pretending that his suicide was mysterious, caused by some "chemical imbalance." That's bullshit.

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) June 9, 2018

Why don't you mention that the reason Bourdain killed himself was because Asia Argento recently dumped him? https://t.co/rM1bxLBfCr

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) June 9, 2018

I wrote about my pal Tony https://t.co/4STkQsUxVV

— your friend Helen (@hels) June 8, 2018

Also at TMZ:

ANTHONY BOURDAIN
EVERYTHING SEEMED GOOD WITH GF
... Until This Week https://t.co/nJQ1UQvHHl

— ☮️ 🕊 🌎 tmarie (@Syr829) June 9, 2018

Here's where things get murky. We know Anthony was shooting his show in France this week -- he'd been there for at least 4 days. However, Asia was back in Rome, strolling around with a French reporter named Hugo Clément. There were photos of them holding hands and hugging, but the Italian photographer who shot the pics pulled them off the market on the heels of Anthony's death.

It's unclear if Anthony and Asia had broken up. If they did, there was no public announcement. Their last public appearance together was at an event was back in April in NYC.

Anthony Bourdain Has Died

Today's a sad day. Charles Krauthammer released a statement saying he's got just weeks to live. He's been recovering from a successful surgery to remove a tumor of the stomach, but now the cancer's returned, very aggressively it turns out. More on that later, but it makes me sad. I think I've been just amazed by Krauthammer all these years, even when I disagreed with him, but he's so good. Just so good. It's a wonderful thing that he was able to share some final thoughts with everybody, so folks can respond with their well-wishes.

Meanwhile, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain committed suicide. See CNN, via Memorandum, "CNN's Anthony Bourdain dead at 61."

Bethany Mandel has written about suicide this week, first about Kate Spade's death, and the loss of her father to suicide, at the New York Post. And then again today, with the news of Bourdain. It's very profound reading:

In the wake of Kate Spade's death, I wrote about my father's suicide for the first time. Thank you to my amazing husband @SethAMandel for editing this, I don't usually submit things to him because he's brutal, but this time he was kind. https://t.co/nlgHdfBmzJ

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) June 7, 2018

To all suicide survivor kids, a note: https://t.co/d3kmxndiRA

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) June 8, 2018

Porn Star August Ames Commits Suicide

This story is sad and infuriating.

At the Independent Journal Review, "Porn Star August Ames Found Dead After Bullying Over Refusing to Shoot With Man Who Does Gay Scenes."

TWITTER- @AugustAmesxxx ❤
INSTAGRAM- https://t.co/UB42y0wW9q ❤
ONLYFANS- https://t.co/CpeVxiWNnI ❤
WISHLIST- https://t.co/Qj9lsCzcnV ❤ pic.twitter.com/9FLF3XehkW

— AugustAmesFan™ (@AugustAmesFan) December 4, 2017

Also, at the Federalist, "Porn Star Commits Suicide After Mob Hounds Her for Refusing Partner Who Had Gay Sex":

August Ames was a porn star who said she would not have sex on camera with a guy who had done gay porn. Apprently the "tolerance brigade" of gay porn starns litterally hounded her until she really did kill herself

— Kinda Bored & Why Am I Wasting Time Here? (@lamblock) December 8, 2017

The Gaystapo drove August Ames to suicide because she wouldn’t work with a crossover actor in a state where it’s no longer illegal to knowingly infect someone with AIDS.

— Craigé Schmuckatelli (@CraigR3521) December 8, 2017

For a while now, the joke has been that political correctness is moving so swiftly that not only will you have to approve of gay sex, it will become mandatory. I don’t mean this as an unfortunately literal bit of gallows humor, but Ames’ death does raise eyebrows because it speaks to a frightening dystopia where any traditional deference to female vulnerability becomes subservient to liberal pieties about sexuality.

The day Ames killed herself, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about a case involving a Colorado cake baker who doesn’t want to make cakes for gay weddings. The baker, quite understandably and credibly, insists there’s a rather large expressive and artistic component to his vocation, so he shouldn’t be forced to endorse any particular message or religious ceremony he disagrees with. The counterargument is that it’s just a cake, and as long as you’re open for business, you have to serve anyone without discrimination.

Well, I’m scratching my head trying to figure out how Ames’s detractors weren’t extending the exact same logic of “public accommodation” to her. After all, she’s open for business, if you want to call it that. Wouldn’t it be discrimination to exclude working with an entire class of people?

RTWT.

'Dying together was their deepest wish...'

Maybe if it truly was "their deepest wish"? Maybe if there were young, legally-informed family members around to guard against malicious state "health" officials. Then maybe, just maybe, I could accept this. I'm still skeptical, though. I just am.

At Althouse, "'Nic and Trees Elderhorst, both 91, died [together, by euthanasia] in their hometown of Didam, in the Netherlands, after 65 years of marriage'."

It's the Netherlands. I'm not at all confident the Netherlands is all that different from Iceland when it comes to protecting life. Did you see this? "Monstrous: 'Iceland is on pace to virtually eliminate Down syndrome through abortion'."

I'm for life. I don't like the European, or Nordic or whatever, approach to "human compassion." It's evil.

'Assuming I did not botch the task, by the time this posts I will have been dead via suicide for several hours...'

Will H. Moore, a professor of political science at Arizona State, took his life last week, and, most dramatically, scheduled a blog post to go live a couple of hours after he planned to complete the deed.

His blog's still up (search "Will Moore blog" if you're up for reading it).

I cribbed the opening quotation from his scheduled post from Inside Higher Ed, "Aftermath of a Professor's Suicide: A death this week leads to renewed discussions about academics and mental health."

ICYMI: Recent suicide by prof sparks renewed discussions about access to mental-health services for faculty members https://t.co/QpZmLQj5b8 pic.twitter.com/P9n0fFwaWm

— Inside Higher Ed (@insidehighered) April 24, 2017

Professor shares suicide note on blog https://t.co/bZCrcsVHIU #highered

— Inside Higher Ed (@insidehighered) April 20, 2017

WATCH: Dramatic Video of Drunk Passenger Clinging to Lifeboat Before Falling Into Ocean

ABC 7 Los Angeles reported that the passenger had been drinking and was belligerent with crew members.

But here's London's Daily Mail, "Desperate search for passenger who was filmed falling into the sea after clinging to the side of a life boat on Royal Caribbean cruise ship."

And at the Heavy, "WATCH: Man Jumps Overboard Royal Caribbean Cruise Ship."

Watch, at ABC News, "High Seas Search After Passenger Goes Overboard on Cruise Ship."

Governor Jerry Brown Signs Assisted Suicide Bill Into Law

There's supposed to be all kinds of safeguards with the legislation, but I still don't like it.

At the Los Angeles Times, "After struggling, Jerry Brown makes assisted suicide legal in California."

FLASHBACK: "Assisted Suicide of Healthy 79-Year-Old Raises Right to Die Issues."

Jeffrey Spector Kills Himself at Swiss Dignitas Clinic Despite Not Being Terminally Ill

He was going to be terminally ill, with a tumor lodged next to his spine.

But his disease hadn't advanced that far yet. He just said fuck it anyway. Might as well go for it before the going got too rough.

At the Telegraph UK, "Dignitas death sparks renewed controversy over assisted suicide law."

And at the Guardian, "Man who killed himself at Dignitas explains decision in film."

I don't like it. Assisted suicide is rife with abuse. Frankly, it's unholy and evil, but then, all that progressives touch is unholy and evil.

Placentia Teacher Hangs Herself in Classroom

This is sad.

At the O.C. Register, "'Right away we knew something really horrible had happened': Photography teacher ID'd as woman found hanged at El Dorado High in Placentia."

The woman, Jillian Jacobson, a popular photography teacher, left no suicide note.

Also at ABC 7 Los Angeles, "STUDENTS FIND TEACHER HANGING IN PLACENTIA CLASSROOM."

Physician-Assisted Suicide is Receiving Fresh Support, But Remains as Open to Abuse as Ever

It's a terrible, terrible policy.

European countries put old people to death simply for being lonely, while calling it "compassionate."

And now Brittany Maynard's case is being used to advertise "death with dignity."

I can't think of anything as ghastly.

From Paul McHugh, at the Wall Street Journal, "Dr. Death Makes a Comeback":

‘I guess Jack’s won,” a pal of mine said, alluding to Jack Kevorkian , whose views on physician-assisted suicide are lately back in vogue. With backing from liberal financier George Soros —a longtime supporter of “right to die” legislation—proponents are intent on expanding beyond Oregon, Vermont and Washington the roster of states where the practice is legal. Legislation to allow assisted suicide is moving through New Jersey’s statehouse, last month a New York legislator vowed to introduce a similar bill, and in California state Sens. Bill Monning and Lois Wolk are working to legalize the practice.

My pal may have a point, but he perhaps has forgotten how often in fights for good ideas, the bad ones—even when crushingly defeated, as when Michigan sent Kevorkian to prison in 1999—sidle back into the ring and you have to thrash them again.

Since ancient Greece physicians have been tempted to help desperate patients kill themselves, and many of those Greek doctors must have done so. But even then the best rejected such actions as unworthy and, as the Hippocratic Oath insists, contrary to the physician’s purpose of “benefiting the sick.” For reasons not too different, doctors traditionally refuse to participate in capital punishment; and, when they are inducted into military service, do not bear arms.

lso, as Ian Dowbiggin showed in “A Merciful End: The Euthanasia Movement in Modern America” (2003), physician-assisted suicide was periodically championed in the 20th century yet rejected time after time by American voters when its practical harms were comprehended. As recently as 2012, Massachusetts voters defeated an initiative to legalize assisted suicide.

There are two essential harms from the practice. First: Once doctors agree to assist a person’s suicide, ultimately they find it difficult to reject anyone who seeks their services. The killing of patients by doctors spreads to encompass many treatable but mentally troubled individuals, as seen today in the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland.

Second: When a “right to die” becomes settled law, soon the right translates into a duty. That was the message sent by Oregon, which legalized assisted suicide in 1994, when the state-sponsored health plan in 2008 denied recommended but costly cancer treatments and offered instead to pay for less-expensive suicide drugs.

These intractable, recurrent drawbacks are but one side of the problematic transaction involved with assisted suicide. The other, more telling side is the way assisting in patients’ suicides hollows out the heart of the medical profession.

The fundamental premise of medicine is the vocational commitment of doctors to care for all people without doubting whether any individual is worth the effort. That means doctors will not hold back their ingenuity and energies in treating anyone, rich or poor, young or old, prominent or socially insignificant—or curable or incurable.

This is the heart and soul of medical practice. The confidence with which patients turn to their physicians depends on it, and it is what spurs doctors to find innovative ways of helping the sick.

So why do the arguments for physician-assisted suicide regularly recur? Primarily because of compelling stories about patients who despair when medical futility, burdensome treatments and an unavoidable, painful fate seem to combine. Such patients have never been rare.

A recent high-profile case was that of Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old woman diagnosed last year with a malignant brain tumor. She chose to publicize how, given her fears over what doctors were predicting, she would move from California to Oregon where a physician could—and did—prescribe medications for her to kill herself before many of the symptoms she feared had developed...

Keep reading.

Stephen Collins Dead — UPDATED: Story Turns Out to Be False

At Twitchy, "‘Baywatch’ star reports: ‘7th Heaven’ dad Stephen Collins has committed suicide."

Added:

That guy from 7th Heaven lives right around the corner from me & just shot himself a few minutes ago...

— Donna D'Errico (@DonnaDErrico) October 8, 2014

That's all I know. The police have the street cordoned off and aren't even letting residents in..

— Donna D'Errico (@DonnaDErrico) October 8, 2014

pic.twitter.com/6kzwcQGsCX

— Donna D'Errico (@DonnaDErrico) October 8, 2014

More:

#BREAKINGNEWS: LAPD responding to reports of single gunshot at home owned by TV actor Stephen Collins http://t.co/ytX6HQJ3Bs

— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) October 8, 2014

UPDATE: At CBS News:

.@LAPDHQ says gunshot report at actor #StephenCollins' #Tarzana home turned out to be false: http://t.co/NQLMKvGdBb. @breakingnews

— CBS Los Angeles (@CBSLA) October 8, 2014

And check Twitchy for updates as well.

Stephen Collins -- Cops Swarm Home After Suicide Report ... False Alarm http://t.co/pMVRo6t7uV

— TMZ (@TMZ) October 8, 2014

Dead LAPD Officer Found Inside Thousand Oaks Home

A suicide, apparently.

At KABC-TV Los Angeles, "DEAD LAPD OFFICER FOUND IN THOUSAND OAKS RESIDENCE AFTER DISTURBANCE REPORT."