Tag: suicide

Young Asian American Adults Are The Only Racial Group With Suicide As Their Leading Cause Of Death, So Why Is No One Talking About This?
SOCIAL JUSTICE, VIDEO REELS

Young Asian American Adults Are The Only Racial Group With Suicide As Their Leading Cause Of Death, So Why Is No One Talking About This?

Racially motivated violence looks like the mass shootings that killed Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Chung Park, Hyun Grant and Suncha Kim in Atlanta on March 16, 2021. Racially motivated violence also looks like suicide, which is defined as a deliberate act of self-directed violence in order to cause injury to oneself that results in death. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. When broken down by race, suicide is the first leading cause of death among Asian American young adults age 15-24. This is true of no other racial group in this age range in America. Despite this disparity, very little attention is paid by society and by gatekeeping institutions like academe and private and public funding...
The Legend Of The Flying African Caused By A Mass Suicide Of Slaves
Journalism, VIDEO REELS

The Legend Of The Flying African Caused By A Mass Suicide Of Slaves

In May 1803 a group of enslaved Africans from present-day Nigeria, of Ebo or Igbo descent, leaped from a single-masted ship into Dunbar Creek off St. Simons Island in Georgia. A slave agent concluded that the Africans drowned and died in an apparent mass suicide. But oral traditions would go on to claim that the Eboes either flew or walked over water back to Africa. For generations, island residents, known as the Gullah-Geechee people, passed down the tale. When folklorists arrived in the 1930s, Igbo Landing and the story of the flying African assumed a mythological place in African American culture. Though the site carries no bronze plaque and remains unmarked on tourist maps, it has become a symbol of the traumatizing legacy of trans-Atlantic slavery. Poets, artists, filmmakers, jazz m...
IN OTHER NEWS

US study finds correlation between youth suicide, household gun ownership

Professor Michael Siegel of Boston University, co-author of a new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine on January 17, declared household gun ownership rates within the United States to be "the strongest single predictor of a state's youth suicide rate". Wikinews interviewed Siegel to learn more. Siegel and colleagues including predoctoral fellow Anita Knopov, the lead author, compared data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2004, when the body last surveyed US gun owners, to corresponding information on suicides by 10–19 year olds from 2005 through 2015. The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System was used to find data on such variables as education, depression, and suicidal planning and ideation. The study reports "For each 10 percentage-p...
Robin Williams’ suicide was followed by a sharp rise in ‘copycat’ deaths
CELEBRITIES

Robin Williams’ suicide was followed by a sharp rise in ‘copycat’ deaths

“Hanged.” The front page of the New York Daily News said it all in one word on Aug. 13, 2014. Above the capital letters, which filled nearly a third of the page, was a photo of comedian Robin Williams with a somber expression, dead at age 63. The headline, unfortunately, contravened the most basic recommendations of the World Health Organization and suicide prevention experts for how the media should cover suicide, including “toning down” accounts, to avoid inspiring similar deaths. News of Williams’ death appears to be associated with a nearly 10 percent rise in the number of suicides in the United States in the five months that followed, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE. That increase was especially large among men ages 30 to 44, whose suicide rate rose...
Hollywood producer dies by suicide, family says, lashing out at Weinstein, McGowan
LIFESTYLE

Hollywood producer dies by suicide, family says, lashing out at Weinstein, McGowan

Jill Messick, a Hollywood producer and executive who once worked for Miramax under Harvey Weinstein’s leadership and served as Rose McGowan’s manager, took her own life on Wednesday after a long battle with depression, her family said. She was 50. Following her death, Messick’s family released a blistering statement condemning Weinstein, McGowan, and the media for their portrayals of Messick, who “became collateral damage in an already horrific story.” “Jill was victimized by our new culture of unlimited information sharing and a willingness to accept statement as fact,” the family said in a lengthy statement to the Hollywood Reporter. “The speed of disseminating information has carried mistruths about Jill as a person, which she was unable and unwilling to challenge. The family accuse...