Research suggests that improving sleep quality can reduce an individual’s tendency to attempt suicide, the John Tung Foundation said on Sunday, which was World Suicide Prevention Day.
WHO analysis on suicide showed that about 800,000 people kill themselves worldwide every year, while up to 25 times as many attempt to commit suicide, the Taiwan Suicide Prevention Center (TSPC) said
The John Tung Foundation said a study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry in June suggested that treating a person’s insomnia can improve their emotional health, and also reduce the risk of that person committing suicide.
The study was conducted by a research team at Stanford University’s School of Medicine on 50 university students aged between 18 and 23 who had had suicidal thoughts. Their sleeping behavior was monitored for a week, the foundation said.
The results showed that the students who suffered sleeping disorders were more likely to have suicidal thoughts, it said.
John Tung Foundation mental health section head Yeh Ya-hsin (葉雅馨) said the study suggested that sleeping problems can lead to young people having suicidal thoughts and that it could be used for suicide prevention because sleeping disorders can be observed and are not stigmatized like mental health issues.
“Most people have experiences of sleeping poorly... and it can affect their emotions when they awake the next day, such as becoming bad-tempered, impatient, unable to concentrate or acting on impulse,” she said.
Other studies have shown that about 15 percent of people with depression die by suicide and that sleeping disorders are one of the easiest symptoms of depression to observe, Yeh said, adding that parents should pay more attention to their children’s sleeping problems and not neglect them, as they can be warning signs of mental health issues.
Suicide is usually the result of multiple causes and often the person is suffering intense stress and despair, or symptoms of insomnia, anxiety, depression or an inferiority complex, TSPC director Lee Ming-been (李明濱) said
About 30 percent of adults in Taiwan suffer from sleep disorders and many take sleeping pills, but if it is beginning to affect them mentally, they are better advised to seek treatment from a psychiatrist, Lee said.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS