Suicides

"The Dog Whisperer" Cesar Millan is usually focused on rehabbing canines -- but he's now revealing some work he had to do on himself following a suicide attempt in 2010. In February of that year, he lost his top dog, Daddy, to cancer after 16 years as a team. A month later, Millan's wife told him she wanted a divorce after 16 years of marriage. The combined blow knocked him for a loop, he shares in "Cesar Millan: The Real Story," a documentary on Nat Geo Wild. In May 2010, he attempted suicide via drug overdose, winding up unconscious and hospitalized, he said.

A schoolmate's suicide is associated with thinking about or trying suicide among teenagers, researchers report. There has long been a theory that suicide is "contagious," meaning exposure to it can increase the risk, but there have been few studies that delve into the possibility. In a study published Monday in the Canadian Medical Assn. Journal, researchers surveyed thousands of teenagers about the effects of suicide by someone they knew or attended school with. "Adolescents may be particularly susceptible to this contagion effect," wrote researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and the Canadian universities of Ottawa and Alberta.

Eighteen soldiers are suspected of killing themselves in February, the Army said, following 24 suicides in January. The increase continues a four-year rise in an Army under stress from two wars. The Army normally releases figures on self-inflicted deaths only once a year. But officials decided to announce monthly figures to focus attention on the problem and on prevention. Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said there were two confirmed suicides in February and 16 suspected but still being investigated -- compared with 11 confirmed deaths in the same month of 2008.

KABUL, Afghanistan - A militant group said its attack Thursday on a NATO convoy in the Afghan capital marked a stepped-up campaign against the foreign presence in Afghanistan, and promised more such assaults. The suicide bombing killed six Americans, including four civilian contractors, and at least nine Afghan civilians, including two children, according to local and coalition officials. "Our party will increase its attacks against foreign troops in Afghanistan in the future," said Zubair Sediqqi, a spokesman for Hezb-i-Islami, which claimed responsibility for the attack.

Actor Rick Jason, who played the hard-boiled leader Lt. Gil Hanley on the 1960s television drama "Combat!," was found dead Monday in his house. He was 74. Jason died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head and was found by his wife about 5 a.m., said Ventura County Deputy Coroner Craig Stevens. He left no note, and authorities only said that he was despondent over personal matters. Funeral arrangements were pending.

It was one of the most baffling mysteries of the World War II era. How did convicted war criminal Hermann Goering manage to poison himself as U.S. soldiers prepared to hang him? A dozen competing theories have swirled for nearly half a century about how the onetime Nazi second in command was able to commit suicide despite around-the-clock surveillance of his military prison cell.

Even after he got sick, even after he'd been fighting the cancer for years longer than doctors expected, Mark Kobayashi didn't think about dying. He always tried to control his body with his mind. Shortly after having a third of his colon cut out, he was sitting up in bed like a king. I have to put all my energy down into my stomach so I'm healing, he declared. He didn't want to have bad thoughts. He didn't even want his wife, Joan, to have bad thoughts.

After crashing her white Corvette and injuring her much-glorified face on the way home from another night of hard partying, Shannon Wilsey sent a friend out to walk her Rottweiler, Daisy, and then shot herself in the head. For the 23-year-old sex video superstar known as Savannah, it was the most outrageous act in a short but outrage-filled public life.

Three of the men suspected of attacking a Christian school in Pakistan this week, killing six people, blew themselves up Tuesday after they were challenged by police, said Tahir Quyoom, deputy inspector general of police in the northern city of Muzaffarabad. All three are believed to be dead, Quyoom said.

Walter Gonzalez hawks military pins, key chains and ribbons from a makeshift stand at a bustling plaza, peddling memories of a war few care to remember. "When we returned from there, we remained in the shadows," says Gonzalez, a fatigue-clad, shaggy-haired survivor of battle and years of postwar therapy. "No one wanted to talk about it."

More than 17% of children considered to be at risk of committing suicide have guns in the home that could make a passing destructive impulse deadly, and between 15% and 30% of those adolescents told researchers they had access to those guns, to bullets, or to both. Those figures, presented over the weekend at the American Academy of Pediatrics' annual meeting, underscore a growing interest in pediatricians in weighing in on gun violence and its toll on children. The new research was unveiled during a session of the physicians' confab devoted to understanding the role of violence in media, the challenge of recognizing which kids are potentially violent, and what role guns play in the death and injury of children.

When a person takes his or her own life, stunned survivors often ask, "How could we not have known?" and tell themselves that the fateful act might have been averted if someone had been aware of the victim's suicidal thinking. But is there a screening test that could, with some confidence, detect those at risk of committing suicide, and would wide use of it prevent some of the 37,000 suicides that occur annually in the United States? We just don't know, a federal panel said Monday in a draft report . The acknowledgment came from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force after an exhaustive review of existing research.

Pastor Rick Warren and his wife have launched a petition about mental illness after their son's suicide. “Join Kay and I, and the Saddleback Family, in our effort to urge educators, lawmakers, healthcare professionals, and church congregations to raise the awareness and lower the stigma of mental illness … and support the families that deal with mental illness on a daily basis,” the petition reads. Matthew Warren, 27, shot himself April 5 at his home in Mission Viejo.

Classmates and administrators at a Palmdale middle school struggled Tuesday to make sense of the death of a 13-year-old boy with the "million-dollar smile" who apparently left a suicide note before his body was found at a restaurant 20 miles outside town. Authorities said it appeared that the youth - who was new to the school and despondent over his recent suspension - killed himself. The boy's father alerted authorities Monday when he found a suicide note in his son's room and discovered his gun was missing, Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said.

Students at a Palmdale middle school are struggling to make sense of the apparent suicide of a 13-year-old classmate, who is believed to have shot himself with his father's gun. Grief counselors were sent to Hillview Middle School on Tuesday to help the students. Nigel Hardy's father alerted authorities Monday when he found a suicide note in his son's room and discovered his gun was missing, Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said. A gun was found near his body, which was discovered at a restaurant 20 miles outside town, a Kern County sheriff's official said.

A condemned man on California's death row for murdering five people, including the daughter of blues guitarist Elvin Bishop, is dead in what prison officials say they are investigating as a suicide. Justin Helzer, 41, was found dead Sunday in his cell, where he was housed alone at San Quentin State Prison, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. His brother, also condemned, is incarcerated at the same prison. He and his older brother, Glenn Helzer, and roomate Dawn Godman were convicted in 2005 for a robbery and killing rampage that prosecutors said started with an attempt to extort $100,000 from an elderly Concord couple.

A jury that was hastily sequestered after a defendant in a $3-million bankruptcy fraud case apparently killed himself returned to federal court Wednesday to convict the dead man's wife and co-defendant of a handful of conspiracy, fraud and attempted tax evasion counts. Despite her lawyer's insistence that defendant Letantia Bussell, 53, was too distraught over her husband's death and too sedated to leave her hotel bedroom, U.S. District Judge Alicemarie H.

Friends said Marvin Heemeyer hadn't been seen much. Now they know why: He was turning a bulldozer into an armor-plated vehicle that was impervious to SWAT team bullets. On Saturday, crews used a crane to remove Heemeyer's body from the improvised tank. The muffler shop owner drove his contraption through town on Friday and within two hours had knocked down or damaged nine buildings before the machine ground to a halt in the wreckage of a warehouse.

Audrie Pott's family said the 15-year-old girl either fell asleep or passed out at a weekend party last fall. And she woke up to something her family's lawyer described as "unimaginable. " "There were some markings on her body, in some sort of permanent marker, indicating that someone had violated her when she was sleeping," attorney Robert Allard said Monday. On Audrie's leg was a message, Allard said, that included a boy's name and the words "was here. " Join us at 9 a.m. as we talk with Times reporter Kate Mather about the latest in Audrie's case , and the police investigation that has so far led to the arrest of three teen boys.