Why can't a man be more like a woman? That's the question being posed by doctors attending a conference on suicide and self-harm in Ireland today.

The number of self harm cases presenting in hospitals fell by 6% last year, primarily due to a drop in cases involving middle-aged women and men.

One hundred inmates a year at the country’s largest remand prison are being referred to services outside the jail system for pronounced mental health problems.

Murder-suicides are relatively rare but can be as difficult to predict as suicides, meaning intervention is difficult.

The former head of the Irish Association of Suicidology is due to be sentenced today for stealing over €36,000 from the organisation.

A former chief executive of a suicide awareness charity will be sentenced next month for stealing over €36,000 from the organisation.

A HSE group tasked with battling Ireland’s suicide epidemic failed to spend almost a third of its budget last year due to serious delays in finding someone to lead the organisation.

The president of the Irish Association of Suicidology has called on banks to train staff how to deal with struggling mortgage-holders and warned that more people are taking their lives because of debt.

The brave testimonies of the women suffering from the after-effects of abortion given to the cross-party politicians in Leinster House this week confirms the fact that, far from being a treatment for mental illness, abortion, in many cases, can actually induce it.

A suicide charity has lodged a formal complaint with gardaí and suspended one of its employees over alleged financial irregularities.

A leading suicide charity has been rocked by a suspected embezzlement scandal.

RTÉ has apologised after the father of a young man who took his own life complained about a remark by horse trainer Ted Walsh while commentating on the Galway hurdle on Thursday.

The number of people dying by suicide has surged by 7% in just 12 months — a rate 14 times higher than murder levels for the same period.

Waterford County Council is to host a conference on mental health and suicide in a fresh bid to “help remove the stigma still attached to such conditions”.

I WISH to make a comment with regard to your article on January 6 (Drink driving laws ‘increase suicides’).

THE Government should consider adding lithium salts to tap water in an effort to lower depression rates, a consultant psychiatrist has suggested.

THE father of a 19-year-old Mayo man who took his life by jumping into the River Moy believes the culture of cheap alcohol and house parties contributed to his son’s death.

THE founding member of a coalition of suicide charities, the Action on Suicide Alliance, has pulled out of the organisation claiming it now lacks independence and cannot criticise its state funders.

WITH debt depression a growing concern, banking and debt collection staff should receive mental health awareness training, a leading anti-suicide campaigner has urged.

THE Irish Association of Suicidology (IAS) is training St Vincent de Paul volunteers to enable them to help identify clients likely to be suffering from mental health problems.

About 60,000 people self-harmed last year, mental health experts said today.

THE alarming rise in suicide, particularly among young men who have lost their jobs, warrants an emergency government response, a conference on suicide prevention was told yesterday.

EUTHANASIA advocate, Dr Philip Nitschke, who will hold a workshop in Dublin this week said there was already enough Irish interest in his DIY death techniques to make his visit worthwhile.

RECORDED suicides increased by 43% in the first three months of 2009, figures have revealed.

IRELAND’S suicide rate is at its lowest since 1993 when it was decriminalised, the HSE’s National Office for Suicide Prevention’s (NOSP) latest report reveals.

IRELAND has been condemned for not investing enough in the future welfare of children by the world’s leading promoter of economic growth.

Something needs to be done about the youthful and adolescent psychiatric problems that are besetting this country. We have one of the highest suicide rates in the world among young people.

PIETA House, set up to help prevent suicide and self-harm, plans to open a centre in Limerick.

ONE prisoner has died while in custody in an Irish jail every six weeks since the start of 2007, the Department of Justice has confirmed.

MOST of us will be surprised to learn that a prisoner has died in an Irish jail every six weeks for the last two years. This figure — 16 deaths — is not the kind of statistic that we imagine defines our society.

Official figures severely underestimate the number of suicides in Ireland, a leading mental health campaigner warned today.

ONE in every 165 adolescent girls was treated in hospital after engaging in deliberate self-harm during the last two years, new figures show.

Suicide rates in the Republic are much higher than in the North, a study showed today.

IRISH society is having to face a growing litany of parents who murder their own children before deciding to escape this life by suicide themselves.

I NOTE with interest the comments regarding the possible link between suicide and the closure of rural pubs (Irish Examiner, February 14).

MENTALLY-ILL patients will not have counselling or other non-doctor services paid for by their Voluntary Health Insurance, Health Minister Mary Harney admitted yesterday.

DOCTORS in border counties have been instructed not to refer children or teenagers for psychiatric help except in emergencies because the local services cannot cope.

TIPPERARY mother Teresa Williams, who lost her daughter through suicide almost two years ago, is on a mission to prevent young people from ending their lives.

A MOTHER of five who fell to her death from the fourth floor at Tallaght Hospital in Dublin last weekend will be buried today following her funeral Mass.

A WOMAN plunged to her death from a fourth floor balcony at Tallaght Hospital in an apparent suicide, just days after an outcry over the lack of a suicide nurse at the facility.

A LEADING psychiatrist yesterday urged parents to “wake up” to the dangers posed by the internet to children and young people who might be vulnerable to suicide.

IRELAND is in danger of sliding down “a slippery slope” into euthanasia, a leading Fine Gael TD and suicide expert has warned.

International experts on suicide are to gather in Killarney this month for a major five-day summit.

IN RECENT times Ireland has been forced to come to terms with the disturbing, increasing and under-reported phenomenon that is murder-suicide after a string of high-profile killings.