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Increasing rates of suicide have peaked interest in how individuals with depression may view their environment differently and have abnormal thought processes compared to non-depressed individuals. In order to explore how depressive thought processes lead to completed suicide, this review of literature looks at research and theoretical explanations of rumination, self-destructive thoughts, and feelings of hopelessness. People with depression are more attentive to both their own and other people’s actions and have a strong desire for control. Rumination prevents effective problem solving and increases the duration of depressive symptoms. Highly self-aware individuals often attend to discrepancies between the real self and who they wish to be, which causes distress and overthinking about negative aspects of problems while neglecting the development of solutions. Suicide is one method of escaping the self when these discrepancies become salient and continual failure also leads to feelings of hopelessness. Positive distraction such as getting involved in hobbies as well as the promotion of optimistic and hopeful thoughts may help depressive ruminators refrain from negative thoughts and may ultimately help prevent suicide.

Sulphur-containing amino acids are a crucial requirement for fibre production and may be supplemented in the diet of fibre-producing animals to stimulate fibre growth. The alpaca fibre industry is a developing industry in Australia with high variability in fibre production. To date, there is no evidence whether supplementing the diet of alpacas with sulphur amino acids improves fibre production. We hypothesised that supplementation with the rumen-protected sulphur amino acid, methionine would increase fibre growth in alpacas. Three groups of eight huacaya alpaca wethers were fed daily a maintenance diet supplemented with 0, 2 or 4 g of rumen-protected methionine for 7 weeks. Fibre samples were taken at the beginning and end of the study with a blood sample taken by jugular venipuncture prior to feeding on the first day of each week. Methionine supplementation had no effect on fibre diameter (p = 0.92), fibre length (p = 0.91) or fibre yield (p = 0.33). The change of season over the study affected plasma glucose (p < 0.001), plasma urea nitrogen (p < 0.001) and fibre diameter (p < 0.001). The indifference between groups may be due to the maintenance diet supplying sufficient levels of methionine, the lack of genetic potential of the experimental animals to respond to additional methionine or that the supplemental methionine was not protected in alpacas and deaminated for glucose production.