As U.S. suicide rates rise, experts are divided over which strategies save more lives
Death & Dying
Doctors’ Words Influence End-of-Life Decisions Made By Patients’ Families
Making the decision to approve heroic measures to save a loved one’s life can be fraught with emotion, so anxious family members tend to turn to the doctor for guidance, according to the first study to analyze the role that …
Q&A: Author Emily Rapp Writes About Loving a Dying Baby
It may be the ultimate test of a parent’s devotion
‘Clinically Dead’? How Many Kinds of Dead Are There?
News reports declaring deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak ‘clinically dead’ have onlookers confused. One would think ‘dead’ is a pretty straightforward characterization, but nowadays defining death is a little more complicated.
When Dementia Derails Your Parent’s Finances
Five steps you can take now to help Mom and Dad avoid a money mess
Five Tips for Families Facing End-of-Life Care
In this week’s TIME cover story, “The Long Goodbye” (available to subscribers here), journalist Joe Klein writes about the loss of his parents. They both suffered from dementia and died within months of each other. Through their …
Peter Goodwin: The Dying Doctor’s Last Interview [VIDEO]
Dr. Peter Goodwin, a family physician and right-to-die activist, took his own life on March 11, 2012, at age 83.
Good Grief! Psychiatry’s Struggle to Define Mental Illness Goes Awry
A proposed new definition of depression would include normal bereavement. Why that’s a bad idea.
As Tests to Predict Alzheimer’s Emerge, So May Debates Over the Right to Die
Jack Kevorkian’s fervid fascination with death made him a deeply unattractive human being. Yet he forced us to confront questions that, much as we might want to, we cannot ignore. Do some of us face fates worse than death, such …
House Watch: How Lying Can Kill You
House Watcher was sick last week (final diagnosis: common cold), but I’m all better now, so let’s get right into the best procedural episode of the season, “Recession Proof,” which is about a central theme of the series: …
Study: High Altitudes Linked to Suicide
There are many known risk factors associated with suicide: those who take their own lives are statistically more likely to be white, male, and/or low-income. Surveys show that they are also more likely to have histories of …
Study: Suicide Risk Rises in Patients with Severe Acne
A large new observational study of more than 5,700 Swedish patients being treated for severe acne sought to untangle the links between the popular acne drug Accutane, suicide and acne itself.
Study: fatal medication mistakes surge in July
A new study from researchers at the University of California at San Diego and Los Angeles suggests that a sharp uptick in fatal medication mistakes in July corresponds with the entry of thousands of trainee doctors into medical residency programs across the U.S.