Suicide

More Than 145,000 New York Kids Struggle with Mental-Health Conditions

According to a new study by the Department of Health, New York City preteens struggle with mental illness at rates no higher than their counterparts nationwide. But the numbers are still startling: More than 145,000 city kids -- roughly one in five -- between the ages of six and 12 are reported to h ... More >>

So Many Gay Porn Stars Have Died Lately! Why?

Arpad Miklos (who committed suicide in February) is just one of the rash of porn stars who've succumbed in the last horrifying year. Sean Van Sant from rentboy.com has some ideas. "I think all of these deaths are very different," he wrote to me, "so I do not want to generalize. I think sex workers ... More >>

Rutgers Spy-Cam Creep Dharun Ravi Won't Be Deported -- Which Is Bullshit

Despite having bullied a gay college freshman into committing suicide, Rutgers spy-cam creep Dharun Ravi won't be deported, immigration officials say.That, of course, is bullshit -- especially when you consider some of the other people (who didn't directly cause someone to kill himself) whom the fed ... More >>

Troop Suicides: More U.S. Soldiers Die By Their Own Hand Than In Battle

Almost every day this year, a soldier on active duty took his or her own life -- meaning that suicides killed more troops than war, according to a just released study. The Times as well many other media organizations have reported that there had been 154 suicides this year, compared to 124 militar ... More >>

More Details on Suicide and Slashing at Rikers

The Voice has more details about the man who committed suicide on Rikers, a case that we first reported on Friday. His name is Jamal Polo, age 24. Polo was being held at Rikers on a charge of felony sodomy and forcible touching. Polo hung himself at the George Motchan Detention Center where he was ... More >>

Schools Ignore Gay Bullying at Their Own Peril

An Education in Abuse

Dharun Ravi Accused Of Being Gay By Post Columnist Andrea Peyser (In Column About Not Humiliating People Based On Sexual Orientation)

In a column about a Rutgers University student who committed suicide because he was publicly humiliated by his freshman roommate for being gay, New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser publicly humiliates the roommate -- who by all accounts is not gay -- by claiming that he's a "possible closet case."S ... More >>

AG Eric Schneiderman On Crusade To Curb Prescription Drug Abuse -- And To Bum You Out In The Process

​We're suffering from a severe case of the "blahs" today, and it's not because it's Monday -- it's because we just spent the last 30 minutes reading prescription drug horror stories on New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's website.Schneiderman's on a quest to reduce prescription drug abuse ... More >>

The Strange Death of Flo Barnett, Mother-in-Law to Scientology Leader David Miscavige

We were stunned when Debrah Kitchings said it: in the 26 years since she investigated the odd death of Mary Florence "Flo" Barnett for the Los Angeles County Coroner, she has not once been asked by a reporter about what she remembers of the case. Only once in that time, she says, was she ever aske ... More >>

Joe My God and Dan Savage Raising Money for Funeral of Jacob Rogers, Anti-Gay Bullying Victim

WSMVJacob Rogers​Joe Jervis of Joe My God (the political blog honored last night at the Voice web awards), Dan Savage (whose syndicated column appears weekly in the Voice) and the website Towleroad are all raising money for the funeral of Tennessee teenager Jacob Rogers, who committed suicide ... More >>

Steve Jobs's Death and the Legacy of the Foxconn Factory Suicides

It was a big day for American capitalism yesterday. Nothing captured the dichotomy of how citizens were thinking about it better than the above tweet on how a captain of industry was being eulogized (after the suicides of his de-facto factory workers have largely been ignored), on the same day Wall ... More >>

Hate Violence Up for LGBT People, in New York Area and the Nation, Says Report

A flyer from a 2010 vigil for gay teens who committed suicide​Violence against gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender people was up last year, both in New York City and the nation at large, according to the 2010 National Report on Hate Violence. The report was released today by the National C ... More >>

Philip Chlanda, NYPD Officer, Killed Himself During Late-Night Fight With Girlfriend

​"I love you," said NYPD cop Philip Chlanda to his girlfriend before killing himself in Manhattan early this morning. The New York Daily News reports that the officer, 29, was fighting with the woman after looking at her Facebook page, and the argument continued on West 36th Street near his sq ... More >>

BBC to Air Footage of Man Dying For Science Program

​Next month, the BBC series Inside the Human Body will feature footage from the death of an 84-year-old man. Preempting the inevitable controversy, host Michael Mosley said during a radio interview that it's key not to "shy away from talking about death and, when it's warranted, showing it." T ... More >>

New Yorkers: Miserable, Maybe, But Not Suicidal!

​According to a new joint study from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and England's University of Warwick, New Yorkers are the least likely of Americans to commit suicide. Even so, that does not mean we're particularly happy. Researchers determined that people's overall feelings of well- ... More >>

Today in El Diario: Suicides Up When the Economy Tanks

​Broke people tend to kill themselves Suicides go up considerably during recessions, according to El Diario, the Spanish-language daily. The data, from a report published Thursday, also notes that fewer people kill themselves during economic booms. A Centers for Disease control report indic ... More >>

Today in El Diario: Murder-Suicides More Common Among Men Than Women

​Women who kill the entire family much rarer than men Murder-suicides and multiple murders are common among victims of domestic violence and their abusers, according to experts interviewed by Spanish-language daily. The news comes shortly after Lashonda Armstrong, 25, drove her car into the ... More >>

Today in El Diario: Latina Suicides Grow at Alarming Rate

​The Mark of Suicide A 14 year-old Latina spoke to the City Council on Monday about her fight against depression and suicide attempts, according to the Spanish-language daily. This girl from the Bronx said that she felt bullied by her classmates, who called her "Mexican," instead of her name ... More >>

The Woodmans

Q&A Part 1: Harlem Rapper Donny Goines On The Life And Death Of Producer Disco D

"He told me, 'Donny, don't make music for others, make it for yourself.'"​Saturday marks four years since producer David "Disco D" Shayman took his own life in the basement of his parents' house. Disco's D's public legacy is defined by his involvement in the ghetto-tech scene, allegiances with ... More >>

Daniel Kitson Is on the Radar

The British performer brings The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church to St. Ann's Warehouse

Suicidal Man Saved by Landing in Pile of Garbage Called "an Idiot" by Landlord

​There seems to have been absolutely zero love lost between the landlord of the suicidal man who jumped from a Midtown building on Sunday afternoon -- but who, luckily, landed on bags of left-behind garbage, which, somehow poetically, broke his fall and saved his life. The New York Post caught ... More >>

Fantasia

Dear Tony Perkins: You Are a Terrible, Ignorant Human Who Will Hopefully Die Loveless and Alone

​Dear Tony Perkins: Hopefully our readers don't know who you are until now, but just to be clear, you are the former Louisiana congressman who is now the president of an uber-right evangelical Christian organization called the Family Research Council, where you pose as a responsible moral au ... More >>

Andrea Peyser's Crocodile Tears for Tyler Clementi

​We know that Andrea Peyser has little to no sense of humor, let alone irony. But we hope that even she can see the irony in this. This week Peyser opened a segment of her New York Post column with the thought "It's gone too far. My heart breaks for Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi, victimized ... More >>

Anti-Gay Harassment Leads to Four Teen Suicides

Seth Walsh, aged 13.​Yes, quadruple horror stories have emerged as a result of homophobic bullying around the country lately, and Lambda Legal Deputy Legal Director Hayley Gorenberg had this anguished reaction to it all: "Our hearts and sympathies are with the families and loved ones of the f ... More >>

New York Tops the Nation in Jumper Suicides. Um -- Congrats?

​Remember Thomas Magill, the man who survived his apparent suicidal jump from the 39th floor of a building by landing atop a conveniently parked Dodge Charger? He's not really alone, even if he thinks he is. According to the Wall Street Journal, suicide by leaping from tall buildings (and brid ... More >>

Meet John Doe

Dwayne Spence, 25, Shot by Friend Who Then Kills Himself in Brooklyn (update)

Date: Monday, Feb. 23, 2010, 12:45 a.m.
 Location: In front of 86 MacDonough St., Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. We heard over the weekend from friends and relatives of Dwayne Spence, a 25-year-old Brooklyn man born in Jamaica who was shot and killed on Feb. 23 in what turns out to be a bizarre c ... More >>

Noose

SUICIDAL TENDENCIES

Kristen Kosmas’s new play concerns a girl with a death wish

David Foster Wallace, Fine Fellow Moviegoer

I Am a Cat

A Short Life Ends on Rikers Island, in a Place Where Suicide Isn't Supposed to Happen

Talking With Jellyfish Director Etgar Keret

How my cinematographer broke my heart, and other stories

RIP Disco D

'Exit: The Right to Die'

Kill the Messenger

The tragic death of Gary Webb, one of America's most important investigative journalists

'Stay'

No Future

Kurt Cobain's Final Denial

Never More

The death of a hometown antihero: Ann Powers reports from Seattle on the suicide of Kurt Cobain

Leaving the Atrocity Exhibit

Historians remember the author of The Rape of Nanking

Walking the Edge

NYU confronts its suicide problem with counseling and a questionable questionnaire

Seeds of Discontent

Tracking Shot

Losing Joshua

On January 30, He Nearly Killed Himself. On April 16, He Did. A 17-Year-Old's Suicide and the Questions Left Behind

Pozzi Scheme

Roaming Rikers

Stun Shields, Stray Cats, Buck-Fifties, Boofing: The Top Brass’s Tour of America’s Largest Penal Colony

Dead Reckoning

60 Minutes Starring Jack Kevorkian

A Question of Murder

Nine years ago, a forbidden interracial love affair in an east Texas town ended with a hanging. Was it suicide or a perfect lynching?