A peer in the House of Lords has put forward a proposal to revisit the legalization of assisted suicide in the United Kingdom, drawing criticism from one Welsh doctor who is an independent crossbench member of the House of Lords.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, who is a professor of palliative care and crossbench life peer in the House of Lords, wrote in a May 20 essay for The House magazine that a proposal to revisit what backers often term “aid in dying” is not medical assistance, but rather is unlawful assisted suicide.
“Contrary to what the words might suggest, what’s being suggested isn’t that people should be given assistance as they die. That’s what doctors, and especially those of us who specialize in end-of-life care, do,” Baroness Finlay stated
“What's being proposed is something radically different – that doctors should be licensed by law to supply lethal drugs to terminally ill people who appear to them to meet certain broadly-worded conditions. In law that’s assisting suicide …More

This is a story of two men who were condemned by the state of California.
Both were war heroes. Both had a family history of insanity. Both turned to crime after leaving military service — burglaries, robberies, and finally murder.
Both were treated in state prison institutions for mental illness attributed to their family background and war experiences.
Both argued that their illness compelled them to rob, steal and kill and asked the governor to commute their death sentences to life imprisonment.
Erwin Walker was one of the condemned men. As a lieutenant in charge of a radar unit during World War II, he was among those who swarmed ashore to recapture the tactically vital island of Leyte in the Philippines despite fierce Japanese resistance.
Walker began showing signs of a mental breakdown after his best friend and other soldiers under his command were bayoneted to death in a surprise attack. He was sent home, convinced that he had caused the death by not adequately preparing his men …More

A 54-year-old woman arrested in relation to allegations of ill-treatment of patients at Muckamore Abbey Hospital has been released pending a report being submitted to the PPS.
Detectives from the PSNI's Public Protection Branch arrested the woman in the Antrim area this morning. She was the 22nd person to be arrested in connection with the investigation.
An investigation has been taking place into claims of patient abuse at the facility on the outskirts of Antrim town, which is operated by the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust.
It is the biggest criminal investigation of its kind in Northern Ireland with 1,500 suspected crimes discovered in one ward between April and September 2017.
More than 300,000 hours of CCTV footage from hospital wards are central to the police investigation - with staff suspects not realising the cameras were recording.
So far, seven people have been informed they are to be prosecuted for a range of offences, including ill-treatment and wilful neglect of patients. …More

Never underestimate the power of a mother’s love.
“If not for my mother, I would probably be dead, in jail or on the street somewhere homeless,” said U.S. Marine Corps veteran Jerome Brown, who spoke to the Jacksonville Breakfast Rotary Club on Friday.
His mother is Million Heir-Williams, a former Onslow County Commissioner and the author of Military Mom on a Mission: An Advocate for Mental Health, a book inspired by the experience of helping her son through his bout with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after a nine-month deployment to Iraq.
“We went through a lot of hell,” Heir-Williams said, who joined Brown in Jacksonville last week to speak about the book.
Six weeks after Brown's discharge from the military, he suffered a complete mental breakdown and was diagnosed with PTSD, severe psychosis, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder.
“I don’t think anyone who goes to war is the same person when they come back,” said Brown, who recalled erratic behavior post-deployment and bizarre …More

Tragically, suicide is not as rare as one may think. In 2018, global data from the World Health Organization (WHO) reported an estimated 793,000 suicide deaths worldwide. Most were men.
Now in a pandemic, that number can only be expected to rise.
Also, it is noted, that women are more likely than men to attempt suicide, but the method chosen by men, make them more likely to complete the act before anyone can intervene. One study of more than 4,000 hospital patients in the US, who had engaged in self-harm found, that the men had higher levels of suicidal intent than the women.
Suicide is a hugely sensitive, complex issue with a tangled multitude of causes, and the very nature of a death by suicide means we can never fully know the reasons behind it.
Why are men struggling––and what can be done about it?
One key element is communication. It is too simplistic to say women are willing to share their problems and men tend to bottle them up. But it is true that for generations, many societies …More

University of Missouri Extension will offer free one-hour suicide prevention training sessions online in April and May.
QPR Gatekeeper Training helps participants “question, persuade and refer” someone who may be suicidal, says MU Extension health and safety specialist Karen Funkenbusch. QPR was created in 1995 by clinical psychologist Paul Quinnett as an emergency mental health intervention for suicidal persons.
The free sessions, presented via Zoom, will help anyone who wants to know the warning signs of suicide, how to offer help and how to get help to save a life, Funkenbusch says. Participants learn to be “gatekeepers” who can recognize when a person might be in a suicide crisis and knows how to respond.
“A gatekeeper can be anyone,” Funkenbusch says. “We can all save lives. Signs of crisis are all around us. The QPR hourlong training empowers people to recognize those signs and make a positive difference.”
At the end of the training, attendees receive two-year certification.
Dates …More