News of Lee Thompson Young's shocking suicide rocked Hollywood on Monday, sending many celebrities to Twitter to remember the former Disney child actor.

Young found fame in the titular role of "The Famous Jett Jackson," between 1998 and 2001. He held smaller recurring roles on "Scrubs,""FlashForward," and "Smallville."

Most recently, Young played Detective Frost on TNT's "Rizzoli and Isles." The show announced it would halt production in the wake of the actor's death, tweeting:

We're devastated by the news of the passing of Lee Thompson Young. Lee will be cherished and remembered by all who knew and loved him.

— Rizzoli and Isles (@RizzoliIslesTNT) August 19, 2013

Celebrities spoke of Young's spirit and talent.

Very very sad to hear about Lee Thompson Young. He was always very kind, and such a light.

— solange knowles (@solangeknowles) August 19, 2013

This breaks my heart. RIP Lee Thompson Young.

— Donald Faison (@donald_faison) August 19, 2013

I had the pleasure of working w/ #LeeThompsonYoung on Flash Forward & he was an extremely talented ... http://t.co/ZIszod3eR7

— Gabrielle Union (@itsgabrielleu) August 19, 2013

My heart goes out to Lee Thompson Young RIP.. These child stars are leaving us too soon! My heart is aching...

— Tia Mowry (@TiaMowry) August 19, 2013

I have no words to say. I honestly am speechless to the recent passing of my old friend Lee Thompson Young.

— Keke Palmer (@KekePalmer) August 19, 2013

All I can do is pray for his spirit, I pray that it finds the peace he was looking for. God bless his family.

— Keke Palmer (@KekePalmer) August 19, 2013

Former Disney Star Dies At 29 via @HuffingtonPost. I am so sad. I loved this brother http://t.co/zzGnLKF7yZ

— sinbad (@sinbadbad) August 19, 2013

Sorry to hear about #LeeThompsonYoung. #RIP. You never know what anyone may be going thru. Spread Love.

— Dulé Hill (@DuleHill) August 19, 2013

My sympathy to the family of Lee Thompson Young and to all who knew and loved him. (con't)

— Wes Craven (@wescraven) August 19, 2013

I had the pleasure of working with him in 2007 on Hills Have Eyes 2. (con't)

— Wes Craven (@wescraven) August 19, 2013

He was a pro, gifted and warm. The tragedy of this kind of loss is particularly bewildering and painful.

— Wes Craven (@wescraven) August 19, 2013

The cast of "Glee," who recently lost its star actor Cory Monteith, also took to Twitter to mourn.

Man… RIP #LeeThompsonYoung#JettJackson

— Amber Patrice Riley (@MsAmberPRiley) August 19, 2013

Everything that glitters isn’t gold. You just never know, that just tore me up a little. Man…

— Amber Patrice Riley (@MsAmberPRiley) August 19, 2013

Feeling incredibly sad about Lee Thompson Young. My heart goes out to his family and friends. #gonetoosoon

— Harry Shum Jr (@iharryshum) August 19, 2013

My deepest thoughts and love to the friends and family who knew Lee Thompson Young

— Jenna Ushkowitz (@JennaUshkowitz) August 19, 2013

SEE ALSO: 'The Famous Jett Jackson' Disney Star Dead At 29 Of Suicide

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A high school sophomore from a wealthy Connecticut suburb committed suicide in his home after the first day of school following years of bullying, the Connecticut Post reports.

Google+ posts from 15-year-old Bartlomiej "Bart" Palosz, who was a student at Greenwich High School, suggest that he's been struggling with bullying and suicidal thoughts for some time. One post even references a previous suicide attempt.

Schools superintendent William McKersie told the Connecticut Post the school is "looking very carefully at what has happened over the last number of years here." Connecticut police are also interviewing students to investigate the bullying allegations.

Bart moved to Connecticut from Poland when he was in elementary school, according to the Post. He said on Google+ that he had been bullied at school daily for the past 10 years.

Family friend Lisa Johnson said Bart was a "total sweetheart" and that kids didn't appreciate him.

A preliminary investigation revealed that Bart used a gun from his family's safe to commit suicide, police told the Post.

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ZURICH (Reuters) - The finance chief of Zurich Insurance, Pierre Wauthier, wrote about his relationship with chairman Josef Ackermann in his suicide note, the company confirmed on Friday, and pledged to investigate whether he had been put under undue pressure before his death.

Europe's third-largest insurer has been thrown into disarray since Wauthier was found dead at his family's lakefront home on Monday and the subsequent resignation of former Deutsche Bank <DBKGn.DE> boss Ackermann three days later.

Ackermann, one of Europe's top financiers, said Wauthier's family believed he shared responsibility for his death. He denied the allegation but said he was quitting to avoid damaging Zurich's reputation. He joined as chairman last year.

In a conference call, acting Chairman Tom de Swaan tried to reassure investors perplexed by the dramatic chain of events.

"The board sees it as its prime responsibility to look into the question as to whether there was undue pressure placed on our CFO," he said.

De Swaan said he was not aware of any inappropriate behavior by Zurich's board members.

A person close to Ackermann said Wauthier's widow had accused him in the days following her husband's death of setting demanding targets that had put huge pressure on the 53-year-old father of two.

Wauthier's widow has declined to comment.

De Swaan confirmed that Wauthier, a company veteran who took over as finance chief in 2011, had left a suicide note in which he talked about Ackermann but declined to elaborate out of respect for the family.

FLUX

Ackermann's abrupt departure crowns a period of considerable flux among Zurich Insurance's upper echelons. Its life insurance chief Kevin Hogan left two weeks ago to join AIG <AIG.N> as its head of consumer insurance and former general insurance head Mario Greco quit a year ago to become head of Italian insurer Generali <GASI.MI>.

"The board is well aware of the need to strengthen the management team, and I consider this to be our top priority," said de Swaan, who was previously vice chairman. "Our focus is on ensuring the continued stability of the company."

Shares in the group, the worst performing insurance stock in Europe over the past six months, rose 1.62 percent after the conference call with investors noting that Ackermann's departure would not derail the group.

"Ackermann has not been there for a long time. He's not the architect of anything, and this is not a company in a big transition," said one Top 20 shareholder, who declined to be named.

The investor said Ackermann's openness about why he was resigning was actually reassuring.

"I was quite surprised at the statement and the references to Pierre's family. Normally, you see a holding statement," he said.

"In a funny way, though, what he said was better than if he just walked without saying anything, because then it would look like perhaps there was a hole or that something was wrong with the accounts. Not so much a cover-up but that something might have been found in the company."

DIFFICULT SITUATION

The suicide scandal comes as Zurich Insurance tries to turn around its performance. Two weeks ago the group reported a 17 percent slide in first-half net profit and it said low investment returns meant it would miss some targets.

The company's shares have fallen nearly 11 percent in the past six months, compared with a near 10 percent increase in the European insurance index <.SXIP>.

A former colleague of Wauthier's said there had been pressure within the company to turn around its share performance.

Ackermann, who had been expected to take on a more high-profile job in his native Switzerland than the chairmanship of an insurer, wanted to boost Zurich's market share and make it more dynamic.

Former colleagues of Ackermann say he does not court confrontation.

"I have never seen Ackermann lose his cool at a meeting. But if you were underperforming, he had a way of communicating it without having to spell it out in a way which was personal. You talked about the numbers, and they told you everything you needed to know," said one senior banker, who declined to be named.

At Zurich Insurance's headquarter, staff are reeling from Wauthier's death and the company has installed a telephone hotline for employees.

"It's a very difficult situation; Pierre had been here since 1996 and was held in very high esteem by his colleagues." said one staffer, who declined to be named.

(Additional reporting by Katharine Bart in Zurich Philip Halstrick and Edward Taylor in Frankfurt and Sinead Cruise in London. Writing by Carmel Crimmins; Editing by Will Waterman)

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The shocking suicide of Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro sparked jubilant reactions from Twitter, but the 53-year-old's death could be a tragic development for his three victims.

Castro was spared the death penalty in exchange for pleading guilty to keeping 3 young women captive in his nightmarish house for a decade. We'll never know why prosecutors offered Castro the plea deal, but it's possible his victims Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight didn't want to endure the pain of a trial.

Knight also said she didn't want him to die when she spoke at his sentencing. His suicide has deprived her of that wish.

"The death penalty would be the easy way out. You don't deserve that," Knight said in court last month, according to a CBS News transcript. "We want you to spend the rest of your life in prison."

Now that Castro is dead, his victims may feel like he's not paying for his crimes, psychologist Linda Papadopoulos told NBC.

"They very literally had a sentence dealt out to them ... They were literally, metaphorically, in every way imprisoned and held captive," Papadopoulos told NBC. "The idea that he did this on his terms again is going to make them, at least to some extent, to feel cheated."

Castro's suicide also doesn't make the Ohio prison system look great.

He was taken off suicide watch in June after authorities decided he wasn't a suicide risk, the Associated Press reported. His defense lawyer Craig Weintraub told the Cleveland Plain Dealer prison officials refused to have his client evaluated for suicidal tendencies two weeks ago.

Instead of being on suicide watch, Castro was in "protective custody" that required officials to check on him every half-hour. He was found hanging in his cell around 9:20 p.m. We don't know the material he used to hang himself, but it's disturbing to think that officials didn't detect his preparations to commit suicide.

Ohio's department of corrections is investigating Castro's death, which came just weeks after an Ohio death row inmate made a noose and hanged himself in his cell.

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International law firm Hogan Lovells is focusing on reaching out to stressed lawyers after one of the firm's longtime partners threw himself under a subway train in London, The Daily Mail reports.

"The firm is actively looking at how to give support to stressed lawyers," firm partner Nicholas MacFarlane reportedly said at in inquest into the suicide of 58-year-old David Latham.

Latham jumped in front of a train in February of this year, a day after he told a colleague he was going to kill himself, according to the Daily Mail. The fellow partner didn't think he was serious, though.

Gillian Webb, Latham's wife, told the Westminster Coroner's Court her husband had been consumed with worry about a big case at work. Latham hadn't slept well for weeks, she told the court. He kept getting calls from work the night before his suicide while the two were sharing a Valentine's Day meal, she reportedly said.

"If a person shows the signs as David clearly had, they should have put something in place to prevent such tragedies," she reportedly told the court.

A Hogan Lovells spokesperson gave this statement to The Lawyer:

We ... have regular interactive talks on health related topic, recent examples include managing your mental health, dealing with stress/developing resilience, sleep, diet and exercise. These events are well attended and appear to be valued by staff and partners alike ... Even before these events we were looking at what we provide in terms of support to everyone in the firm and that work continues.

While it's impossible to know what was going on in Latham's life, lawyers have an unusually high rate of suicide and depression. Many lawyers tend to be perfectionists, psychologist Tyger Latham has pointed out.

"While this characteristic is not unique to the legal profession — nor is it necessarily a bad thing — when rigidly applied, it can be problematic," Latham wrote.

In America, people David Latham's age — between 50 and 60 — have had a huge spike in suicides in the past decade.

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Physicist Stephen Hawking says he thinks terminally ill patients should have access to assisted suicide, as long as there are checks to prevent abuse.

"I think those who have a terminal illness and are in great pain should have the right to choose to end their lives, and those who help them should be free from prosecution," Hawking told the BBC.

In the interview, which the Cambridge University professor gave in advance of the release of a documentary about his life, Hawking recalled his experience being on life support after pneumonia. His wife had the option of turning off the life support, but he wanted to continue living.

Assisted suicide is one of the most divisive issues around the globe. It is legal in Oregon, Washington and Vermont, as well as several European countries — but not in the United Kingdom, where Hawking comes from.

Proponents argue that allowing people who are terminally ill and in incredible pain to end their lives is compassionate. Opponents argue that legalizing assisted suicide will allow caregivers to pressure or trick the disabled, the elderly and the financially insolvent into consenting in order to avoid becoming burdens. [Top 10 Leading Causes of Death]

Hawking said that risk had to be addressed.

"There must be safeguards that the person concerned genuinely wants to end their life and are not being pressurized into it or have it done without their knowledge and consent as would have been the case with me," Hawking told BBC.

In recent years, Hawking has aired his views on a number of controversial subjects: He has argued that the Big Bang didn't need God and that human survival depends on space colonization.

Hawking, now 71 years old, is known for his theoretical work on the origin of the universe and black holes. He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, at the age of 21. The neurodegenerative disease causes the nerve cells that control movement to degenerate, and is almost always fatal.

Though Hawking has been wheelchair bound for decades and lost his ability to speak without an electronic voice in 1985, that hasn't stopped him from working on physics. He published his iconic popular physics book, "A Brief History in Time," in 1988.

The documentary "Hawking" by Vertigo Films is slated for release in Britain on Sept. 20.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter and Google+.FollowLiveScience @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

• The 9 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics
• The 9 Most Bizarre Medical Conditions
• 8 Shocking Things We Learned From Stephen Hawking's Book

SEE ALSO: 11 Great Stephen Hawking Quotes For His 71st Birthday

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Facebook banned a dating website from advertising on its site after it posted an ad featuring a photo of Rehtaeh Parsons, a 17-year-old Canadian who hanged herself after photos of her alleged rape were posted online, CBC News reports.

The offensive ad for ionechat.com was found by a man named Rob Russell, who saw it on his newsfeed, according to CBC News. The ad invited Facebook users to meet Canadian girls and women beside a photo of the deceased Parsons.

The controversy is sure to reignite ongoing debate between Facebook and privacy advocates over how advertisers should be allowed to display user data alongside Facebook ads.

The Guardian reported that Parsons no longer has a Facebook page, but the photo used in the advertisement is the profile picture of the "R.I.P Rehtaeh Parsons" Facebook page.

"This is an extremely unfortunate example of an advertiser scraping an image from the Internet and using it in their ad campaign," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. "This is a gross violation of our ad policies and we have removed the ad and permanently deleted the advertiser's account. We apologize for any harm this has caused."

Parsons committed suicide in April after being bullied by classmates for a year and a half after they used social media to spread photos of her alleged gang rape. The incident was one of several to receive attention this past year in Canada and the United States for showing how social media can be used to exacerbate the pain of sexual assault.

The offending website, ionechat.com, is currently down.

SEE ALSO: Social Media Makes Teen Rape More Traumatic Than Ever

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Rolling Stone has a heartbreaking story with new details about 15-year-old Audrie Pott, who hanged herself eight days after her alleged sexual assault.

The story of what happened to her is now all too familiar. She woke up at a friend's house after a party last year, not realizing where her clothes were. There were drawings all over her body.

Naked photos of her appeared online and spread all over her high school. She started getting horrible Facebook messages, according to Nina Burleigh's story in Rolling Stone. These were two of them:

"S*** went down ahah jk i bet u already got enough ppl talking about it so ill keep it to myself haha. . . ."

"u were one horny mofo."

The day of her suicide, Pott demanded her mother pick her up from school early. Later that night, she found her daughter hanging from her shower nozzle.

Among her last words were, "You have no idea what it's like to be a girl."

Seven months after her suicide, three 16-year-old boys were arrested on charges of sexual battery. A parent of one of the arrested boys talked to Rolling Stone, saying he was saddened by what happened to Pott.

"But the story that things went viral, that the picture went up on Facebook, it is flat untrue. This was not Steubenville," the parent told Rolling Stone. "It was a prank by a few kids, and it's blown out of proportion. Audrie had a lot of other problems in her life, and everybody in Saratoga knows that."

In recent years, Pott had suffered from body image issues. She had developed 34DD breasts by age 13 and, her friends say, she refused to eat in public.

Read the full story here.

SEE ALSO: 16-Year-Old Girl Says She Was Raped On Yale Model UN Trip, Sues Private Day School

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France’s Ministry of Agriculture has published a new report that appears to show a grim epidemic of suicides amongst French farmers.

Titled "Surveillance of mortality by suicide among farmers" and conducted by the Institut de veille sanitaire, the report found that between 2007 and 2009, 485 farmers committed suicide — meaning that one farmer committed ended his or her own life every two days.

Rates of suicide amongst farmers were found to be 20% higher than for the rest of the population. The highest rate for suicide during this period was found to belong to cattle farmers aged between 45 and 64-years-old, who had a rate 47% above the national average.

"These figures are shocking," Jean-Bernard Bayard, Vice President of the main French farmer's union FNSEA told The Local. "We knew there was a high number of suicides but this study makes it clear how bad the problem has become."

While French farmers are said to be the greatest beneficiary of European Union agricultural subsidies, their lives are far from easy. Dominique Barrau, the secretary general of the FNSEA farmers' union, told AFP that farmer had to deal with isolation (many live and work alone) and economic stress — notably, pressure on wholesale milk and meat prices in 2008 and 2009. The study is now being extended to 2010 and 2011 to see if the trend persisted.

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An Alabama 15-year-old hanged himself a day after his high school principal went on local TV to talk about the "legal consequences" of the boy's decision to streak across the school's football field during a game, Al.com reported.

Christian Adamek, 15, was arrested  for the Sept. 27 streaking incident, which somebody recorded using a Vine app and posted to YouTube. Sparkman High School Principal Michael Campbell went on WHNT News 19 on Oct. 1 to discuss the penalties Adamek may have faced.

The TV station has since removed the video, but it's been posted to YouTube. Campbell, who doesn't mention Adamek by name, initially speaks of high school streakers in a general sense.

"They don't look at all the consequences," Campbell says.

In Alabama, the consequences for an indecent exposure conviction include having to be placed on a sex offender registry — a potentially humiliating prospect for anybody let alone a teenage boy.

WHNT, which didn't mention Adamek's name either, reported that the school recommended that a hearing take place to determine whether formal charges would be filed against the boy. Those possible charges included public lewdness and indecent exposure, the station reported.

"There are some pretty serious consequences," Campbell says.

Adamek's Boy Scout troop master David Silvernail remembered him as a boy who joked a lot and didn't have trouble making friends, Al.com reported.

"There are two kinds of people in the world; ones that brighten the room when they walk in and those that don't. He was one that brightened the room when he walked in. That's what I'll always remember about Christian," Silvernail said.

We reached out to the school principal to give him a chance to comment and will update this post if we hear back. Here's the YouTube video featuring the news clip:

SEE ALSO: America Needs To Stop Treating Kids Like Criminals

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Two girls — age 12 and 14 — have been arrested in connection with the suicide of a 12-year-old girl who was "terrorized" by several people on social media for nearly a year, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

The girls have been charged with felony aggravated stalking.

In September, 12-year-old Rebecca Ann Sedwick jumped to her death at an abandoned cement plant in Lakeland, Fla., near Tampa. She had been reportedly bullied by girls who told her to kill herself.

The Sentinel reported that police decided they had enough evidence to charge the girls once the 14-year-old old posted on Facebook on Saturday:

"Yes ik [I know] I bullied Rebecca nd she killed her self but IDGAF <3"

The 14-year-old allegedly started bullying Rebecca once she started dating Rebecca's ex-boyfriend, according to the Sentinel.

She also allegedly convinced the 12-year-old girl, a former friend of Rebecca's, to join in the bullying.

The 14-year-old's father is defending his daughter and told the Associated Press that "none of it's true." He said: "My daughter's a good girl and I'm 100 percent sure that whatever they're saying about my daughter is not true."

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said Tuesday that the 14-year-old was cold and showed "no emotion at all" when she was arrested, according to the AP. Police are considering bringing charges against both girls' parents because the girls still had access to social media after Rebecca's suicide.

The girls have been released to their parents and are now on house arrest.

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The parents of a 14-year-old girl who was arrested after allegedly bragging on social media about bullying a classmate who committed suicide say their daughter's Facebook was hacked, ABC News reports.

"My daughter don't deserve to be in the place she's in right now and I just hope that the truth comes to the surface so we can get out of this nightmare," her father told ABC News, adding that he's certain the girl's Facebook account was hacked.

The 14-year-old allegedly posted Saturday:

"Yes ik [I know] I bullied Rebecca nd she killed her self but IDGAF <3"

"She wouldn't write anything like that. She's not that type of girl that would just say something like that," the girl's mother told ABC.

Police arrested the 14-year-old along with a 12-year-old classmate in connection with Rebecca Ann Sedwick's suicide in Florida.

Bullies allegedly told Rebecca online that she should kill herself. Police were led to the 12- and 14-year-old girls after Rebecca's suicide when friends told investigators that the two girls were the ones leading the bullying.

Rebecca, who was 12 years old at the time, jumped to her death from an abandoned cement plant in September after reportedly enduring more than a year of torment on social media. The 14-year-old allegedly started bullying Rebecca once she started dating Rebecca's ex-boyfriend.

The 14-year-old's parents told ABC that their daughter is a loveable and caring person. They said they checked her Facebook account nightly and also monitored her cellphone.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said Tuesday that the 14-year-old was cold and showed "no emotion at all" when she was arrested, according to the AP.

ABC's video interview with the 14-year-old's parents is embedded below:

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The stepmother of a 14-year-old girl who was arrested for bullying a girl who committed suicide has been charged with child abuse and neglect, ABC in Tampa reports.

During a press conference Friday evening, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd aired a video clip of 30-year-old Vivian Vosburg appearing to beat two boys who were in her care. Unidentified girls in the house were laughing as the video was being taken.

Vosburg's stepdaughter, with whom she lives, was arrested earlier this week for bullying 12-year-old Rebecca Ann Sedwick, who committed suicide in September in Lakeland, Fla.

"The apple doesn't fall far from the tree," Judd said.

The 14-year-old stepdaughter allegedly posted this message to her Facebook page on Saturday:

"Yes ik [I know] I bullied Rebecca nd she killed her self but IDGAF <3"

The teen allegedly started bullying Rebecca once she started dating Rebecca's ex-boyfriend.

Vosburg and the 14-year-old's father appeared on national television on Wednesday to defend the girl. They said her Facebook must have been hacked because the 14-year-old would never post something like that. They also claimed to monitor the girl's Facebook daily to make sure she didn't post anything inappropriate.

Judd said Tuesday that the 14-year-old was cold and showed "no emotion at all" when she was arrested, according to the AP.

Here's the video:

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A 10-year-old Chinese boy jumped 30 floors to his death after failing to write a self-criticism letter demanded by his teacher, state media reported Thursday.

The fifth-grade primary school student had been ordered to write a 1,000-character apology by his teacher for talking in class, China National Radio (CNR) reported on its website, citing a neighbour.

The educator allegedly told him to jump out of a building after he failed to complete the task, the report quoted relatives and the neighbour as saying.

"Teacher, I can't do it," was found written in one of his textbooks, CNR said. "I flinched several times when I tried to jump from the building."

The child smashed into a parked car beneath the flat where his family live, the West China City News reported.

His furious relatives posted a banner outside the school in the southwestern city of Chengdu reading: "The teacher forced our kid to jump off the building," pictures showed Thursday.

"The police investigation is still under way," an official of Jinjiang district, where the incident happened, told AFP, declining to comment further.

Strict discipline is an essential part of China's education system and culture, and tradition demands deference to authority, putting children under pressure to obey instructions.

The boy's school said Thursday on its verified account on Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter, that the child and some of his classmates had been ordered to write reviews of their behaviour after they disturbed a speaking competition.

He died "by accident", it said.

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Since 2001, more veterans have committed suicide than have died in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

That's just one of many heartbreaking statistics found in "Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1," a new HBO documentary which profiles the people working behind the scenes to help veterans and active-duty military members in their darkest hours.

The New York-based Crisis Hotline call center receives more than 22,000 calls each month, and the short film highlights some of the responders taking the calls. 

Calls can be minutes or hours and can sometimes lead to dire circumstances — with supervisors calling local police to visit veterans on the line that have guns right by their side. The responders use phrases like "No one can replace you,""Your children need you," and "Your family loves you"— sometimes being the last person that a veteran may talk to before taking their own life.

No doubt it's an emotional and powerful film and one worth watching. As a veteran myself, I was struck by the immense problem of military suicides. But most amazing were the people on the other end of that line that we often never think about.

While some responders are veterans, many are not, and they all come into work each day, put on a headset, and try to talk people down from the ledge. To be able to carry that emotional baggage day in and day out — and in one instance in the film, spend six hours tracking down a military member that called, hung up, and would have killed himself if they had done nothing — is extremely powerful.

From the film's website:

The film captures these extremely private moments, where the professionals, many of whom are themselves veterans or veterans’ spouses, can often interrupt the thoughts and plans of suicidal callers to steer them out of crisis. Hotline workers sometimes intervene successfully by seizing on the caller's ambivalence and illuminating his or her reasons for living.

The film airs on Veterans Day — Monday, Nov. 11 at 9 p.m on HBO. You can also learn more about the Veterans Crisis Line at their official website.

SEE ALSO: For US Troops, The Toughest Battle Is Waiting For Them Back At Home

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Suicides across the military have dropped by more than 22 percent this year, defense officials said, amid an array of new programs targeting what the Defense Department calls an epidemic that took more service members' lives last year than the war in Afghanistan did during that same period.

Military officials, however, were reluctant to pin the decline on the broad swath of detection and prevention efforts, acknowledging that they still don't fully understand why troops take their own lives. And since many of those who have committed suicide in recent years had never served on the warfront, officials also do not attribute the decrease to the end of the Iraq war and the drawdown in Afghanistan.

Still, they offered some hope that after several years of studies, the escalating emphasis on prevention across all the services may finally be taking hold.

With two months to go in this calendar year, defense officials say there have been 245 suicides by active-duty service members as of Oct. 27. At the same time last year there had already been 316. Each of the military services has seen the total go down this year, ranging from an 11 percent dip in the Marine Corps to a 28 percent drop for the Navy. The Air Force had a 21 percent decline, while Army totals fell by 24 percent.

The officials provided the data to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose it publicly.

Last year the number of suicides in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines spiked to 349 for the full 12-month period, the highest since the Pentagon began closely tracking the numbers in 2001, and up from the 2011 total of 301. There were 295 Americans killed in Afghanistan last year, by the AP's count.

Military suicides began rising in 2006 and soared to a then-record 310 in 2009 before leveling off for two years. Alarmed defense officials launched an intensified campaign to isolate the causes that lead to suicide, and develop programs to eliminate the stigma associated with seeking help and encourage troops to act when their comrades appeared troubled.

The Pentagon increased the number of behavioral health care providers by 35 percent over the past 3 years and embedded more of them in front-line units. It also beefed up training, expanded crisis phone lines and delivered more than 75,000 gun locks to the services to distribute.

While much of the suicide prevention effort involves similar studies and programs, each service has set up its own particular methods to deal with the problem.

Navy Capt. Kurt Scott, director of the service's suicide prevention programs, said the Navy is working to recognize the causes of stress beforehand and then help sailors figure out ways to deal with it. Often stress is tied to family issues, including the strains of leaving for deployments, substance abuse, depression or financial problems.

A study released this summer in the Journal of the American Medical Association found no evidence of a link between suicide and troops who deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan combat zones over the past decade.

Scott said that sailors are receiving annual training, including sessions on how to identify stress in their subordinates or comrades. The training also helps sailors identify personal and work-related issues that might cause anxiety as they prepare to deploy, and then suggests ways to deal with the stress — including exercise or talking out the problems with chaplains or other troops.

The Marines have also targeted substance abuse as something that appears to increase the risk for suicides.

Adam Walsh, who works with the Marine Corp's community counseling and prevention programs, said it's too early to declare that suicides are declining in general. He said, however, that the Marines are updating an alcohol abuse prevention campaign and also now require that every battalion and squadron have a suicide prevention program officer.

The Army, which is by far the largest military service, has the highest number of suicides so far this year, with 124, while the Air Force had 43, the Navy had 38, and the Marines — the smallest service — had 40.

Army spokesman Paul Prince said the service has certified nearly 2,500 military and civilian leaders to be able to interact with soldiers on suicide prevention, and has conducted thousands of hours of training with the troops.

Price said suicide remains a daunting issue for the Army and the nation and "defies easy solutions." So the service has expanded soldiers' access to behavioral health services to improve their ability to cope with the stress that can be caused by separation, deployments, financial pressures, other work-related issues and relationships.

Lt. Col. Brett Ashworth, a spokesman for the Air Force, said airmen have a new program that emphasizes leadership responsibilities in the effort to prevent suicides and a new Air Force website includes tips on recognizing distressed personnel.

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Finally a story about social media and suicide that revolves around prevention and not cause.

Police intercepted a teenager who posted a suicide threat on Facebook by reaching out to him on the social network, reports NBC News. 

After the suicidal teenager posted "I am thinking about jumping" alongside photos of the George Washington Bridge on Tuesday afternoon, a concerned friend contacted the police. (The New York-New Jersey bridge is infamous for suicide attempts, with 43 in 2012 alone.)

The Port Authority Police Department's Lt. Thomas Michaels and Sgt. Nadine Rhem found the teen's profile and reached out with a plea to call their precinct, while also distributing his Facebook photos to officers patrolling the bridge.

Amazingly, the teen, riding on a public bus nearby, called the police department two hours after the Facebook response was sent. 

"I picked up and heard it was him and I almost fell out of my chair," Michaels told NBC News.

Michaels and the teen spoke for about 10 minutes and they arranged to have police meet the bus at the next stop. The 18-year-old volunteered to be taken to a hospital for evaluation.

Although the police often use social media to verify threats and gather background information, this was the first time the precinct had ever used it to reach out to someone and save them. 

In other instances of social media preventing suicide, Facebook itself partners with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to help concerned users report threats they see online. Reddit's Suicide Watch sub-Reddit also tries to help prevent people from killing themselves, with predictably mixed results. 

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A Canadian college student at the University of Guelph reportedly live-streamed his disturbing suicide attempt for 200 viewers in a notorious 4chan forum this weekend, the Daily Dot reports.

In a live feed hosted on video chat website Chateen, the student reportedly consumed a combination of vodka and unidentified pills and used his toaster to start a small fire in the room. According to the Daily Dot, the student appears to catch on fire in the video before being rescued by a group of firemen.

According to CBC News, a 20-year-old University of Guelph student was seriously injured Saturday night after deliberately starting a fire in his dorm room. The school seemed to implicitly confirm the connection to 4chan with a statement on their website, which in part reads, "The University is aware that there is disturbing social media activity circulating about this incident and is urging people not to watch or distribute this hurtful material."

While the student's injuries are not life threatening, a university administrator told CBC that two school employees had to be hospitalized for smoke inhalation and 30 students who lived in the dorm were relocated. 

For a more detailed look at the events of the live-stream, Ishmael Daro at Canada.com offers a breakdown of how the night likely played out:

Another 4chan user set up a video chatroom with a 200-person limit, where "Stephen" proceeded to swallow some unidentified pills and vodka. He later started a fire in the corner of his room and crawled under a blanket, expecting to die. Other people on the message board variously told him to stop what he was doing, suggested ways for him to better kill himself ("bath + toaster for great scientific justice") or called the whole thing a staged event.

Daro also notes that the emergency responders who eventually saved "Stephen" received a call at 7:40 p.m. — "roughly an hour and a half after the initial message on 4chan."

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Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro's prison suicide was "not surprising and perhaps inevitable," according to a report released Tuesday by two independent prison consultants.

The Associated Press reports that the man who kidnapped three women and imprisoned them in his Cleveland home for about a decade was likely harassed by guards during his time in prison and that he had created a "shrine-like arrangement" of family photos in his cell before his suicide. His prison journal revealed his frustration with the harassment.

In August, Castro was sentenced to life in prison without parole plus 1,000 years. He did not appear remorseful for his crimes and insisted that he's not a violent predator.

The consultants did not find the prison staff at fault for Castro's suicide, but they did recommend that Ohio's prison department adopt "enhanced mental health staff involvement with 'high profile' inmates," The Columbus Dispatch reports.

Guards falsified logs that documented the observation of Castro the day he committed suicide, according to a report the prison department released in October. They reportedly failed to check on him at least eight times.

But this did not contribute to Castro's death, the new report found, because guards checked on him minutes before he hanged himself.

The full report is embedded below:

Ohio inmate suicide report

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A student humor website at Cornell University has apologized and removed an article it published seeming to make fun of student suicides — a tragedy often associated with the school and its trademark gorges.

The satirical article — titled "Administration Secretly Kind of Disappointed No One’s Used the Suicide Nets Yet"— specifically joked about mesh metal nets that were recently added under bridges around Cornell's campus. These nets replaced controversial fences that went up following a "suicide cluster" during the 2009-2010 academic year when six students committed suicide. 

The final paragraph of the article had Cornell President David Skorton expressing regret that more students have not attempted to commit suicide since the nets were installed: 

Skorton then remained silent for a while, before sighing heavily and saying, "It just seemed kind of rude, you know? I mean we put a lot of work into this and it seems like the students don't even know they're there…". Skorton noted he is optimistic about the upcoming exam period. "If just one student utilized this infrastructure during finals week that would be really exciting. Maybe do a flip too. That'd be cool."

The website is clear — if bad — parody, and a disclaimer at the bottom of the site states, "CU Nooz is satire. It's made up. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is either coincidence or parody. Shut up." As a former Cornell student who was on campus during the "suicide cluster" my freshman year, I'm sorry, but this satire hit a little too close to home. 

To the editors' credit, the article was quickly removed from the website after people expressed their discomfort with the subject matter, and the student publication issued an apology on their Twitter account:

The previous article posted was posted by accident by a writer without consent from our editors. We deeply apologize for the controversy.

— CU Nooz (@CUNooz) December 4, 2013

Suicide is not something to joke about. We are dealing with this matter. Cornell Suc ide Resources can be found here: http://t.co/xwz9PseNKl

— CU Nooz (@CUNooz) December 4, 2013

Here are screenshots of the CU Nooz post that we grabbed before it went offline:

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