Andrew Koenig found dead in Vancouver park

Prayers from Norphlet for the family of Andrew.

Do we need to put you on suicide watch?

No parent should ever outlive their children. It's as simple and as complicated as that.

Could we get that lucky?

Given the state of present affairs and the worth of a dollar, are any of our lives "really" going anywhere? Personally, I feel like I'm on a treadmill. I'm walking, but I'm not moving. No desire to eat a gun though, thanks to Effexor.

But I do recall reading not too long ago that suicides are up at an unprecedented rate. And if anyone here is suicidal, please for the love of God, get yourself to a doctor. Technically, suicidality is considered a medical emergency. If your doctor isn't available, go to the ER and ask for the Crisis dept. I don't care how long that line is. If you go in there saying you're feeling suicidal, you go straight to the front of the line.

I have a good friend whose 16 yo son committed suicide over a girl. He's never been the same.

You got to wonder if his dad wasn't the problem. His dad was successful and probably had high expectations of his son that the son could not live up to. I bet they didn't hang out much. Just a guess.
Why would you kill yourself? Why not just hock the house and go buy a new Corvette and score some coke and pick up some whores and just party yourself to death?

Because people who are suicidal know what you suggest is nothing but emptiness.

It's also another reason to be careful and read labels on all new medications you are prescribed...it's kind of scary how many warn that the drug can cause feelings of suicide.

I went through that once...suicide is not really a natural inclination for me, thank God, but I know how it feels thanks to a prescription drug. I suspect I got an unwelcome glimpse of hell that day and I scour the internet before taking new drugs to know the side-effects every time now. I never want to feel that again. Ever.

The one drug side affect that I still get a kick out of is one that said "may cause mistaken feelings of self importance"

I think the message here is quite clear. If you go to Canada, you'll end up killing yourself trying to escape.

Damn you. Thrice I was poised to post "Well, at least he didn't die in some sort of gay thing, gone horribly awry" and felt it was too soon. Now it isn't near as funny.

That said, "homo hobo..." What's a term for an addict that rhymes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Canada

Since the Vioxx debacle, I've asked my doctor not to prescribe any medications for me that have not been on the market for at least 5 years. Let somebody else be the lab rat.

Unfortunately, you could say the same about most public parks, so the fact he died there doesn't necessarily mean anything.

However, with a nickname like "Boner" and having probably been exposed to George Takai at some point during his youth, we may be seeing the aftermath of some unearthed repressed memories.....

Psychiatric drugs don't cause suicidal ideation - people on psych meds are by and large already severely depressed and suffering from extreme anxiety, and therefore already suicidal. It's nothing but correlation, not causation. But ambulance-chasing trial lawyers salivated at the deep pockets of Big Pharma and got some settlements, so suddenly we have the warning labels.

Problem is that we don't track long term effects of medications on people, so just because the drug's been on the market for a while doesn't mean that you're not a lab rat. AIDS patients are now living so long that when they develop health problems, the docs (at least the honest ones) have to tell them, "We don't know if its caused by HIV, by you getting older, or by you taking these medications for so long."

Honestly, we have the technology to track how individuals deal with taking medications over long periods of time, but we don't do it for various reasons. I'd be okay with granting companies immunity to lawsuits if it turned out that a drug caused problems in patients who took it longer than the amount of time a drug was used in clinical trials, since odds are there'd be no way for the maker to know that it was going to cause a problem decades later.

I don't take psychiatric drugs and never have.

I have taken drugs for other conditions that had psychiatric side-effects. And I assure you.....it was real.

I am not suicidal..I fight like hell to live every day. I don't want to die and have plenty to live for despite less than ideal circumstances. That day I wanted to die. It's a horrible, horrible feeling. Especially when you go from normal to fucking let me die within a couple hours. Thankfully, Zel was home with me and I still had enough presence of mind to know it was medicine induced.

Still hell, though. =(

Serequil made me feel way to drowsy no matter the dosage. Feel happier of that stuff and on the abilify instead.

And the other reason a lot of people who have recently started psychiatric meds kil themselves is because the drugs are starting to work. A severely depressed person often can't even function enough to put the effort into ending their lives, the drugs often provide enough lift to get them to move to that step. It's why the drugs always need to be paired with councilling and help from trained professionals. The drugs are not a miracle cure, but part of the process.

Now to troll.

I hope Kirk Cameron eats a gun.

This is true. You don't need to be on one of the SSRI or SNRI antidepressants to intensify suicidal ideation. I read somewhere that ANY drug that interacts with the nervous system in any way can have unforeseen psychological effects on people.

But, the people I feel most sorry for are the bipolar cases. Between the lithium and and depakote, lordy, it seems to only intensify their psychosis. It sent my mother batshit nuts. And then this quack she went to needed to take two weeks to wean her off it.

That’s actually not the case. The Koenigs have always been very supportive of both of their children, but there’s still a lot that isn’t known about clinical depression, from which Andrew apparently suffered for years.

The Hollywood cliché of the spoiled little rich kid is just that…a cliché. Not everybody’s Charlie Sheen.

You're confusing effect with cause, and also assuming that just because you don't see more credits under his on IMdB, he wasn't doing other things with his life.

This can't be repeated often enough.

The problem there is that, in the U.S. at least, "standard of care" is now 6-12 psychiatric visits before the patient is sent home and expected to just take meds for the rest of his life. Without continued therapy, and with often horrific side effects, it's no wonder so many go off their meds...to disastrous results.

Indeed, prostitution is technically legal, but "communicating for the purposes of prostitution" is illegal.

I hear that "too tired to kill themselves" line a lot.
Sorry, not buying it. You can't run your car in a closed garage? Not much effort to turn a key in the ignition.

Can't get in an elevator to jump off a tall building?

I can't believe that no matter how depressed you are, you can't do these simple things.

I have nothing at all to add, but this picture is pure awesome, so I'm quoting it again.