Health Programs

The Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism 2002-2003

Thomas Curwen

Feature Writer, Los Angeles Times
Former Deputy Editor, Los Angeles Times Book Review
Los Angeles, California

TOPIC: Feature-length stories for the Los Angeles Times to explore the roles impulsivity and mental illness play in contributing to suicides in the United States

His Work is Still Full of Life
Edwin Shneidman has long been a scholar of suicide. At 86, slowed by illness and out of the mainstream, he's not yet ready for his own death.

Learning to Detect the Enemy Within
Billy Parker's world is coming apart, one question at a time. His life and his problems are fictitious, but he is modeled after real soldiers in trouble: He wants to kill himself.

Choosing Against Life
Judging whether life is worth living or not is, as Camus famously wrote, the fundamental question of philosophy. Yet he clearly understates the problem. For those who kill themselves, there can be no second-guessing. That decision is merely the surcease of pain.

Psychache

Every 17 Minutes, Someone in This Country Commits Suicide. But Opinions on Why there's an Epidemic of Self-Inflicted Death--and how to stop it--Often Conflict.