On a Christmas Eve

A 65 year-old man in France tried to kill himself on Christmas Eve by hanging, stabbing, and setting fire, but all of his suicide attempts failed. When he tried to hang himself, the rope broke. Stabbing himself with a knife did not manage to kill him either. And setting his house on fire only managed to get about 30 firefighters to extinguish the fire, not take his life. He was left alive with his house half burnt down.

Driving into the bay

A 22 year-old man in California drove his car off a bridge in a suicide attempt. Apparently having taken pills when he drove into the bay, he neither drowned nor overdosed after 22 firefighters extracted the man from the waist-deep waters. He just ended up ruining a perfectly fine vehicle.

A train and a hand

An 18 year-old woman in Calcutta, India jumped on the rails just as a train was arriving. However, she ended up in a gap between the rails and mostly made it through intact, except for her hands that were crushed by the incoming train. Now she will have to live without hands.

Crashing into a bus stop

A 29 year-old woman in Britain tried to kill herself by crashing into a bus shelter. However, instead of hurting herself, she ended up hitting a teenage boy who was waiting at the bus shelter. With having severely injured another and convicted of criminal charges, having her driving license suspended because of drunk driving may be the least of her worries.

Poor driving

A 40 year-old woman in Britain tried to commit vehicular suicide, but instead killed a little boy and seriously injured his mother without suffering a single scratch herself.

Exploding the house

A 41 year-old man in Illinois of the United States tried to commit suicide by blowing himself up. He deliberately filled a room with natural gas and lit a lighter, which blew off the side of his house. This being the third attempt at suicide in the same day, he may have hoped it would work this time. However, it didn't. But it did severely damage his house, caused burn injuries that are not life-threatening but still extremely painful with skin falling off, and he might even be criminally charged.

A car fire

A man in his 50s tried to kill himself by setting his car on fire with himself inside. Firefighters and paramedics arrived soon enough to extinguish the fire and rescue the man. Now he has ended up with painful burns all over his body, and he is also down one car.

Fire with children

A 32-year old woman tried to kill herself and her children by sedating themselves and setting the house on fire. However, the medications she used to try to sedate themselves didn't take, so the children managed to alert firefighters. Not only did the woman end up with a wrecked house, she is now facing arson and attempted murder charges.

Trader shooting

A 36-year old man in Brazil shot himself in the chest in a suicide attempt on the trading floor in the stock exchange. This halted Brazilian financial transactions of stocks and securities for 15 minutes, and the trader ended up with a chest wound while failing to kill himself.

Highway dash

A 30-year old man in Utah tried to kill himself by jumping in front of a car entering an interstate highway. It didn't work, and he ended up in the hospital with a whole lot of injuries.

In a garage with a baby

A 21-year old woman put herself in an enclosed garage with her baby and ran a car for its exhaust fumes. Carbon monoxide built up to a level where the infant started to convulse. They were extracted by paramedics who were called by her boyfriend, who was alerted by the apparent suicide notes she left, and were put into a hyperbaric chamber to get rid of the carbon monoxide buildup. Not only the woman is now facing a reckless infant endangerment charge, but her son may also have suffered permanent brain damage.

Hanging in someone else's house

A 42-year old man in Michigan broke into his wife's home and tried to hang himself on a swing set. Police who arrived responding to the break-in managed to get him down before he asphyxiated. He will not only have to face the embarrassment of trying to hang himself from a swing set, but he may also face possible criminal charges.

An apartment fire

A 55-year old woman in Oklahoma tried to kill herself by setting her apartment on fire. While the entire building housing three apartments was damaged, the woman herself was rescued by firefighters. From burns to injured lungs from smoke inhalation, she ended up hurting herself just enough to make life painful for her but not enough to die. In addition, she may be facing a criminal charge for arson.

More attempts with worsening economy

With the economy worsening the way it has been, it's quite possible that the number of suicide attempts could grow drastically in the near future. The sad thing is that most suicide attempts will end up in failure, where many of the cases would result in permanent and severe damage, making a terrible situation for someone even worse.

Storage building fire

A 28-year old man in Iowa tried to kill himself by setting a storage building on fire with himself inside. While the fire burned down the building, it failed to kill the man. Not only did he end up with painful burns that may follow him for the rest of his life, he also ended up being arrested for arson.

Trying to kill yourself like an insect

A 37-year old woman in India tried to commit suicide by ingesting insecticide. However, her husband found her and rushed her to the hospital, where she was operated on. She will survive, but at least she should now know that an unsuccessful attempt at killing yourself could get you cut open, with the doctors doing who knows what inside your body.

Potential murderer screwing up headshot

After shooting his significant other multiple times, a man in Houston tried to kill himself by shooting himself in the head. It didn't blow his brains out, however. Instead, he found himself in the hospital, and his next stop will probably be in jail for attempted murder.

Mother sedating herself and her child

A woman in Bangladesh tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of sedatives. She didn't want to die alone and also fed her four-year old child sedatives. Unfortunately for her, the child died while she survived. If she's unlucky, she will have suffered liver damage, and she will still have to live with the guilt of killing her child for the rest of her life.

Stabbing while high

A woman in California tried to kill herself by stabbing herself in the gut after getting high on LSD. People might try to keep her away from drugs from now on. She might also be wondering just what she must have been thinking while on LSD as she recuperates from her injury.

Headshot at school

A 17-year old boy shot himself in the head at Mira Loma High School in Sacramento. The shot failed to be fatal, and he ended up on life support in a nearby hospital. After failing his suicide attempt, he will be lucky if he doesn't end up with brain damage.

Bridge jumping over the Ocmulgee River

A woman tried to kill herself by jumping off the Otis Redding Bridge in Georgia. She jumped during broad daylight, so she was promptly rescued by police and paramedics. She got a broken back for her troubles, which would make doing things in the future a bit harder.

Channel drowning

A man in California tried to drown himself by jumping into the Dominguez Channel. He was rescued by fire fighters, but given that he was not breathing when he was taken out of the water, it's possible he may have suffered brain damage.

Shooting the wrong man in the hand

After making a 911 call threatening suicide, a man in New York State fled into the wilderness carrying a rifle. After a few days he was found by state troopers, and one of them was shot in his right hand as he struggled to keep the man from shooting himself. After causing a major search effort while he was alone in the wilderness for a couple of days, the man ended up hurting someone other than himself while failing to fulfill his goals.

Consecutive failures from the second floor

After being admitted into a hospital for a failed suicide attempt with a cut to her throat, a 55-year old woman in India tried to kill herself by jumping off the second floor. It wasn't high enough: she suffered various injuries and lots of fractured bones.

College students more suicidal than expected

A recent study from the University of Texas at Austin has found that suicidal thoughts among college students were more common than expected, with more than half of the students having had them. And more than 5% have actually seriously attempted suicide.

Misaimed speeding car

A speeding car should always be considered a potentially dangerous weapon that could kill other people, not as a reliable means for killing yourself. A 33-year old man in Australia tried to kill himself by trying to drive his car into a tree. Instead, he crashed into a car driven by a mother of the same age and killed her. Not only did he cause enormous damage to two cars, probably got severe non-fatal injuries, and is also probably going to jail, he is also responsible for killing someone other than himself.

Stabbing yourself while on the phone

If you're trying to kill yourself, it's not a good idea to declare it loudly and repeatedly at the same time you're on the phone with relatives. A 60-year old man was on the phone with his relatives in his car when he stabbed himself, but the relatives had been in contact with the police, who very quickly found and airlifted him to a hospital. Stabbing your own heart is not as easy as you might think, and it hurts.

Forsaking the tourists

The tourism minister of Tasmania in Australia attempted suicide yesterday. She doesn't seem to have suffered any permanent damage, but it might affect the administration of tourism in the region for a while.

Starve or burn

A man in India poured kerosene and set himself on fire, despairing that he had no way to feed himself and his family. However, his neighbors found him and managed to douse the fire. The end result was 70% of his body suffering from burns, and him even worse off in his ability to feed his family.

Stabbing an elderly chest

A 95-year old man apparently tried to commit suicide by stabbing himself in the chest. It just got him into a lot of pain; he didn't even fall unconscious. He is recovering in a local hospital, where he will unlikely be able to try another attempt.

Hanging from the fourth floor

A woman in Azerbaijan tried to commit suicide by jumping off the roof of a four-story building. Officers from the Ministry of Emergency Situations managed to stop her, however. She had to suffer the indignity of being manhandled and having images of her attempt posted on the Internet. At least she didn't actually jump off, which would more likely than not resulted in a lot of broken bones without actually killing her.

Stuffed washcloth

A woman in San Francisco tried to suffocate herself to death by stuffing her mouth with a washcloth. She was found before she asphyxiated to death, and she probably suffered brain damage from the lack of oxygen.

Razor blade attempt

A man in an Oregon jail tried to slit his own throat using a blade scavenged from a safety razor. Before he could bleed out to death, he was taken to the hospital and survived. Not only would he have had to suffer through lightheadedness due to blood loss, but he'll probably have to grow a beard when in prison.

Apartment fire

A man in Alaska set fire on his own apartment in an attempt to commit suicide. Despite the fire spreading through his apartment and smoke coming out of the building, the police were able to extract the man while the firefighters managed to put out the fire. Not only did he fail to get himself killed while risking the lives of his neighbors, his apartment is now in ruins and he may be criminally charged with arson.

Bandage suicide attempt

A prison inmate tried to kill himself using a bandage used for his injury. While the authorities have not revealed exactly how he tried to use the bandage, he probably tried to strangulate or hang himself or he could have tried to stuff the bandage in his throat to choke himself. Whatever it was, it didn't work out so well, which is no surprise considering how stretchy and porous bandages usually are. From now on, he'll probably get funny looks whenever he needs bandages.

Pushed to the brink by the power company

An 84 year old veteran of World War II tried to kill himself by swallowing a hundred sleeping pills. He was pushed to suicide because of the large bills that his power company had been demanding for years, and when them breaking into his home to install a prepayment meter was the last straw. The ridiculous thing was that the bill was wrong. In fact, it was the power company that owed the man a large amount of money.

After taking the pills and spending two nights in the cold, with no heating in the winter, he was found three days later by a relative. He was taken to the hospital unconscious, and they managed to save him. After the old man's suicide attempt, the power company may end up having to pay its due, which would be a rare good result from a failed suicide attempt.

Juvenile center bed sheet hanging

A 17 year old teenager hanged himself with a bed sheet in a juvenile detention center at Los Angeles. Before he could expire, he was found and rushed to a local hospital. Not only did he have to experience the agonizing pain of being asphyxiated, he failed to achieve death and ended up in critical condition in the hospital. Another attempt will be difficult under the circumstances.

Missed shot to the heart

A former Green Beret veteran pointed a handgun to his chest and fired. Remarkably, despite shooting a derivative of a hollow-point bullet, the bullet passed clean through his body and missed his heart. He not only had to suffer the pain of a bullet wound, but his own opinion of himself as a sharpshooter probably suffered as he missed hitting a vital organ at point blank range.

Jumping into a river

A man jumped from a height of 100 feet, or 30 meters, into the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania from the Wrightsville-Columbia Bridge. All the bones in his body didn't shatter on impact with the water; in fact, he survived. He suffered the indignity of being fished out by a person who was fishing for something else nearby, and ended up with pain in his head and neck for his troubles.

Mass suicide for love

An Indian man and two women tried to commit suicide while taking their two children with them. They took a variety of pharmaceutical drugs and pesticides to end their lives. Unfortunately for the adults, they didn't die. Even more unfortunately for one of the children, he died. At least the other child survived by spitting out the nasty tasting substances.

Now the parents will have to face the fact that they killed their own child. And it's doubtful that the other woman, who the man was having an affair with, will be able to stay with the man. Having the other woman elope to the husband and wife seems to have been the better option. If the wife was willing to commit suicide with the husband and the other woman, she would have been able to tolerate living with the other woman ...

Coverage of Britney Spears suicide attempts

It might be just me, but the media seems to be paying way too much attention to a claim that Britney Spears attempted suicide twice. Regardless of whether it's true or not, it seems to be occupying a disproportionate portion of suicide attempt news. Can't they leave the poor woman alone?

And now I'm feeling guilty that I might be adding to the brouhaha ...

Fumes in a hotel

In what should have been a private affair, a man created toxic fumes that caused a public spectacle, where a partial evacuation had to be made of the hotel he was staying in. He mixed household chemicals to create the fumes, which not only put his own life at risk but also those of others who were also staying at the hotel. It didn't work, and his attempt got into the news. The only silver lining is that he's not facing criminal charges.

Decriminalizing suicide in India

Like many other countries, India currently treats suicide attempts as a crime, where a sentence of up to a year in prison can be imposed. They are now considering whether to decriminalize suicide attempts and treat survivors as mental health patients. I would say that this would be a step in the right direction, since instead of giving further incentive to commit suicide by giving people a criminal record without treating the underlying motives, they would at least be trying to fix whatever is causing someone to commit suicide.

Hanging in jail

A murder suspect tried to hang himself in full view of a surveillance camera. Being under the watchful eyes of the guards, it's hard to see how he expected anything else than two minutes of agony while he suffocated. If he's innocent, then he tried to lose his chance at proving it and went through extreme pain for nothing. If he's guilty, then he tried a rather painful and unlikely to succeed way to escape.

Mother stabbing children

A mother stabbed her two children and then herself, but failed to kill anyone. They are as of yet in critical condition in the hospital, although the mother is obviously in a different one from the children.

She will probably never be allowed to be with her children again, and she'll have to live with the guilt of what she'd done for the rest of her life. What is it with some mothers who want to take their children's lives along with their own?

Drunken crash

Just after three days after a man tried to kill himself in a crash, two men crashed their car in the same canyon. Despite rolling over and ending up upside down after running off the road, the two men survived. When they were being rescued, they slashed themselves with glass shards and flung blood at the rescue workers exclaiming that they wanted to die.

If this was not a spur of the moment action by two drunken men, then shame on them for being copycats. They could have least tried out something slightly original instead of trying the same failed plan that someone else also tried just a few days ago. And they should have slashed themselves before crashing, not after. There's another black mark for them for acting horribly against the rescue workers that were trying to help them. The workers were people trying to help, so it behooved the two men to respect the workers, even if they didn't have to actively cooperate.

If they were just acting drunk, then shame on them for being disrespectful to everyone who decides to commit suicide after serious consideration. One should not try to take one's own life on a whim.

After their crash, they now have a wrecked car, multiple injuries along their body, and probably a prolonged stay with police officers or mental health professionals. They probably won't be able to try another stunt for awhile.

Jumping off the Grand Island Bridge

A man jumped off the South Grand Island Bridge in New York State and fell through a height of 80 feet, or 25 meters for the civilized person. Contrary to expectations, he survived relatively intact. Except for a broken leg. And massive injuries to the face, which will probably remain with him for the rest of his life.

Crash and drown

A man in Utah crashed his car and tried to drown himself. When medics tried to help him after the crash, they found him with multiple stab wounds, and the man ran away to a nearby creek to drown himself. Despite all that, he survived and was taken to a nearby hospital. After suffering the pain of stabbing himself, the shock from a car crash, and the suffocating feeling you get during drowning, he still failed in killing himself and suffered all that pain for nothing. The grilling he'll probably get from the police won't be pleasant, either.

Not dying alone with gas

A woman tried to kill both herself and her husband by asphyxiating themselves by gas. It didn't work, and now she may have to serve time in prison for trying to take her husband with her. As always, a big thumbs down for trying to kill someone besides herself.

Texting while taking pills

When you're trying to kill yourself, sending text messages after swallowing a bunch of sleeping pills is a recipe for failure. Most people have the decent instinct to help others survive, so it's no surprise the correspondent of the text messages managed to get an ambulance to the prospective suicide victim. Not only that, but it's likely that the pills wouldn't have done their job anyways, and there is the possibility of organ damage.

Jumping at the airport

A Puerto Rican man jumped off the upper level of a parking garage at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida. Contrary to expectations, however, he survived the fall when he landed on a bus and rolled to the ground. He didn't even manage to fall into a coma. After his injuries from the fall are healed somewhat, he will then probably be incarcerated in a mental facility for awhile, and he may even have to recompense the damage done to the bus after he gets out.

Pill escape

Attempting to kill oneself by overdosing on pills is likely to fail. If you swallow a whole bunch of sleeping pills, then you won't be falling into a deep sleep that you will never wake up from. Instead, you'll start having trouble breathing and feel like throwing up for quite awhile. If you're lucky, you'll survive the experience without any harm to your physical health. If you're unlucky, you'll end up with liver or brain damage for the rest of your life.

It's rather unlikely you'll end up dead with many over-the-counter pills, although certain drugs are more likely to get you killed extremely painfully over a prolonged period due to liver damage. And there's no guarantee that you'll end up dead instead of ending up in searing pain throughout your entire body for the rest of your life.

Trying to follow the children

A woman in Oman tried to kill herself after killing her two children. After making a call to the police that she killed them, she tried to follow them to death but was stopped by the police. While her children were strangled, it's not clear on how she planned to kill herself.

Her failure means that not only would she not be able to be with her children (assuming one believes in the afterlife and that they would go to the same place), but she would also have to live with the fact that she killed her own children while she herself survived. That must be one of the most terrible positions a mother could be in. Not that she was justified in killing her children in the first place: while her life is her own, she had no right to take away all possible futures from her children.

Burning near presidential palace

Having burned half of your body in an attempt to burn yourself near the Italian presidential palace has got to be extremely painful. Considering that the purpose was to attract media attention to medical malpractice, a lawsuit or talking to a news reporter might have been less painful.

Plastic bags in jail

Trying to suffocate yourself by enclosing your head in a plastic bag could work. But then again it might not, which would only embarrass you if you don't manage it properly. And it would probably result in yourself being closely watched by others, which would make any further attempts very difficult.

Lying in the morgue

From an outsider's viewpoint, attempting suicide by freezing yourself in the morgue is rather morbid. While losing one's fiancee is sad, trying to leave this world by lying down with her body in the morgue and freezing would rather shock anyone who tried to retrieve her body. And if it doesn't work, you could suffer from brain damage, and that is just terrible to contemplate.

Burning in Afghanistan

Imagine that you're in a country where fundamentalist religion rules, where oppressive abuses of women are thought of as perfectly acceptable. Imagine that you're a woman. Imagine that a foreign nation invades your country, possibly causing collateral damage around you, but they promise to improve the civil rights situation after they've won. Now imagine that there has been almost no improvement to the barbaric cultural values in your country, and you're still being physically and/or sexually abused.

It wouldn't be hard to understand why some women would opt to burn themselves to death. But some of them survive, and it's hard to imagine the hardships they would have to endure after such a failed attempt. Society no longer accepting them, the burn injuries they suffer from, such things would be horrible. This is another case of being between a rock and a hard place.

Ablaze with shame

Setting yourself on fire has got to be one of the more terrible ways to go. And if it doesn't work, you'll probably end up with horrible disfigurement from the burns and a lifetime of pain. And I don't think it will erase the shame that a rape victim might feel (the shame that would push someone to suicide in the first place).

A rape victim doesn't deserve to be punished like that (they shouldn't be punished at all, in fact). I wouldn't mind the rapist suffering from a similar fate, though.

Saved by inmates

Hanging yourself when there are people around sounds like a recipe for failure. The typical human response would be to save someone who's trying to kill himself, and the jail inmates who were with this guy who tried to hang himself do not sound like people who enjoy watching someone die. Now not only does the guy have to face the fact that he's in jail, but also the fact that he failed yet another suicide attempt.

Burning everyone but yourself

If you're trying to remove yourself from the gene pool, try not to take others with you. Using something as volatile as natural gas to suffocate yourself can result in an unintentional explosion from an unexpected spark or flame somewhere, which can end up killing people around you. This would suck, especially if it doesn't kill you. It's one thing to take away your own life which should be yours to control, but taking away someone else's life, taking away all the potential choices another could make, is really, really bad.

Train hit attempt

If you get hit by a fast-moving car or train, it's not unlikely that it will get you killed. Unfortunately, if you try to get hit by a train, it is also not unlikely that the train will stop in time. Not only would you have failed to killed yourself, you would also be doing harm to presumably thousands of people who commute by train.

Pills in Kuwait

It would suck if you tried to kill yourself with poison in Kuwait and failed. Not only might you have to suffer the indignity of a stomach pump, but you might end up charged with a crime. Trying to kill oneself in a country where fundamentalist Islam reigns sounds like being between a rock and a hard place: it's too oppressive to live in, and yet you might not be able to guarantee your death in a suicide attempt.

In jail

Try not killing yourself in jail. Not only could you fail with the prison staff reviving you, you'd probably end up under close watch to prevent further suicide attempts. If the reason you wanted to kill yourself was to be free of an oppressive and bleak environment, it would suck if it turned even more oppressive and bleak.

Botching suicide

I have been too inept to actually be able to commit suicide, which is probably a major reason I'm still alive now. I know just enough to see the myriad of ways I could screw up, but I'm not knowledgeable enough nor courageous enough to actually assure success. I'll be talking about the myriad of ways that a suicide attempt can be botched.

By the way, these days I'm no longer actively thinking about wanting to die, even though passively I might think so. Maybe antidepressants do work after all.