Questions tagged [suicide]
Questions about individuals taking their own lives. Please follow the site guidelines on this topic: own life. [This is a sensitive topic; please follow the site guidelines: https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2871/]
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Did Brazilian football fans take their own lives inside the stadium after the loss to Uruguay in 1950?
An oft-repeated claim about the Uruguay v Brazil 1950 World Cup match is that upon the blowing of the final whistle, several Brazilian fans took their own lives inside the stadium.
The LA Times says ...
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Will a proposed Canadian law allow minors to be euthanized without parental consent?
As reported on FoxNews. This immediately triggers my skepticism since it seems pretty extreme.
From the link above:
Creighton School of Medicine professor Charles Camosy joined 'Tucker
Carlson ...
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Do "people who undergo gender transition" die by suicide at a rate "about 20 times higher than their peers"?
A Wisconsin state representative staffer shared a scan on Twitter of a sponsorship memorandum for bill LRB-0396: The Help Not Harm Act - Prohibiting sex reassignment of minors. A pdf of the memo is ...
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Did Near, a prominent emulator developer, take their own life?
A couple of weeks ago, there was news in the gaming-related media that Near, the developer of SNES emulators, has reportedly died by suicide.
However, the proof of this is an anonymous document posted ...
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Have "government handouts" increased the suicide rate in Alaska?
Wikipedia's biography of Don Young, the U.S. Representative for Alaska's at-large1 congressional district, says among other things that:
When asked about the fact that the state of Alaska has the ...
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Did a suicidal woman talk a police officer into jumping with her?
Right now, memes featuring a supposed news paper article stating "SUICIDE WOMAN TALKS COP INTO JUMPING WITH HER!" are going around. For example:
More examples (not displayed as images to ...
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Are gender dysphoric teenagers more likely to take their own lives if they are not allowed to transition?
In a recent essay defending her controversial views on sex and gender issues, author J.K. Rowling writes:
The argument of many current trans activists is that if you don’t let a gender dysphoric ...
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Have 41% of transgender people attempted suicide?
In Daniella Carter's TED talk "Walking in your truth as an LGBT youth", she mentioned:
I need it, they need it, we need the love, we need the liberation, we need the support, not only for the 2.5 ...
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Were there more suicides than violent deaths worldwide in 2018?
According to this article at lidovky.cz, there were more suicides than violent deaths all over the world in 2018. Is that true?
The important part of the original (Czech) article:
817 000 versus ...
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Asking about suicidal thoughts won't push someone into doing it
I've seen this advice repeated on a couple of websites, e.g. Mayo Clinic:
Asking about suicidal thoughts or feelings won't push someone into doing something self-destructive. In fact, offering an ...
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Are suicide rates among millenials increasing?
Simon Sinek claims in this video (at about 9:40min) that the suicide rates and the accidental drug overdoses among young people from the so-called "millennial" generation are increasing at the moment. ...
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Did 304 US soldiers kill themselves in 2009 compared to 149 killed in Iraq?
An image posted on reddit this week has been getting a lot of attention.
The image is of a mural claiming that in 2009, 304 US soilders committed suicide compared to 149 killed in Iraq.
What is the ...
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Is there a Russian social media game called "Blue Whale" that incites self-violence and suicide?
According to the Daily Mail:
Police in Russia are investigating a rush of teenage suicide attempts amid fears that they may have been manipulated by sinister social media groups.
Two schoolgirls fell ...
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Have more US veterans taken their own life in the last six years than died in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Is this claim by Jill Stein accurate?
I'm assuming that she's referring to US veterans, both for the suicide rate and the combined death rate in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Did Alan Turing commit suicide, or is it possible his death was an accident?
When Alan Turing died, the reason for his death was cyanide poisoning, and his death was officially ruled as a suicide. See Homosexuality, Conviction and Death
The BBC published an article in which "...
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Does winning the lottery increase odds of committing suicide?
I've heard on a few occasions claims that one should not play the lottery because it increases the odds of committing suicide later. Here are a few articles I found that at least reference the idea:
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Can hypnosis be a contributing factor to suicide?
A Florida school district has agreed to pay $600,000 to settle a case involving a principal who hypnotized students, three of whom died shortly after (some from suicide). Many of the reports in the ...
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Is suicide caused by or correlated with living at high altitude?
According to the article There's a Suicide Epidemic in Utah — And One Neuroscientist Thinks He Knows Why:
... Despite ranking as America's happiest state, Utah has disproportionately high rates of ...
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Do blue lights on railway platforms reduce suicide?
Does the installation of blue lights at specific locations on station platforms reduce the incidence of suicide...
at that location?
using that particular method ('suicide by train')?
overall?
The ...
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Does Apple install suicide prevention nets at their Chinese factories?
I had a discussion with a friend about the sometimes poor working conditions in China and especially the electronics market. Now what really surprised me was his statement that Apple and other ...
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Do higher rates of lithium in groundwater lead to a decreased suicide rate?
NyTimes: Although it seems strange that the microscopic amounts of lithium found in groundwater could have any substantial medical impact, the more scientists look for such effects, the more they seem ...
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Do animals commit suicide?
I've done some Googling and only found case stories without any scientific backup. Most of the case reports about animal suicide online can by easily debunked by logical reasoning. For example there ...
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Are discussions about suicide themselves suicide triggers?
Several online forums I've frequented have had discussions removed when suicide methods are mentioned. The reasoning have been that discussion about suicide themselves are suicide triggers. While it ...
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Did a man jump to his death after too much shopping?
According to a news article, Man commits suicide after girlfriend refuses to quit shopping, a man in China jumped to his death after his girlfriend insisted on going to one more shoe outlet after an ...
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Are GMO crops to blame for farmer suicides in India?
Anyone who follows the genetically modified organism (GMO) debate has probably heard the claim that GMO crops, and specifically the inability to save seed and other associated production costs, have ...
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Are suicide attempts via wrist cutting likely fatal?
New York Times: Those methods that require forethought or exertion on the actor’s part (taking an overdose of pills, say, or cutting your wrists), and thus most strongly suggest premeditation, happen ...
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Was Kurt Cobain listening to R.E.M.'s Everybody Hurts when he killed himself?
Kumail Nanjiani on why he hates R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts”
The above article on the A.V. Club website makes the following claim:
This might not be true, but the legend is that this is the song ...
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In Pre-WWII peacetime Germany, were there about 18,000-20,000 suicides per year?
In a discourse to his staff in 1943, Hitler made this claim:
In peacetime Germany, about 18,000 or 20,000 people a year chose to commit suicide, [...] Source
Was this true?
I'm skeptical of this ...
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Stock Market Crash of 1929: Did Wall Street investors jump off buildings?
I think the tales of Wall Street financiers plunging to their deaths in 1929 are probably well known.
The Hudsucker Proxy
From Random Facts - The Great Depression:
After the initial crash, there was ...
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Was there a peak in suicides associated with the release of Pokémon red and green?
My 13-year-old stepson just told me this story: When Pokémon Red and Green was first released in 1996, there were dozens or hundreds of suicides of children caused by high-frequency sounds in the ...
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Are one-third of teen suicides homosexuals?
The media and government officials have often claimed that the rate of teen suicide for homosexuals is vastly higher than the suicide rate of heterosexual teens. The figure they often use is that an ...
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Do spies use cyanide or other suicide agents as a last resort?
Spy movies and novels have popularized the idea that CIA agents, or other spies, will carry cyanide pills, or other "quick and painless" suicide devices with them on covert missions, to use as a last ...
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Are suicide rates higher during week-ends and holidays?
In the ever growing series of questions about time or weather dependencies of crime or other kinds of behavior, I have heard several times people pretend that the suicide (and attempted suicide) rate ...
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