In the months following August 4, 1962, when Marilyn Monroe’s death, probably by suicide, became known, the number of people who attempted suicide in the United States rose by 12%. A similar phenomenon was observed shortly after the deaths of actor Robin Williams and chef Anthony Bourdain. Although the contagion effect is amplified when the protagonists are famous, it also exists among acquaintances and some analyses attribute 5% of youth suicides to imitation.
Many suicides are committed during a brief crisis and because the tools are at hand, not because of a sustained conviction. And this can be used to develop preventive measures. Over the past two decades, Hungary has halved its suicide rate by improving psychiatric care and increasing the number of hotlines where people in crisis can turn. Denmark has also made improvements with seemingly simple measures such as reducing the number of paracetamol tablets that can be bought at one time.
In this effort to understand the nature of suicide and ways to prevent it, understanding the mechanisms of contagion helps reduce transmission, as happens with infectious diseases. With that intention, today, a group of researchers led by Jeffrey Shaman, a researcher at Columbia University who uses mathematical models to understand and prevent the transmission of diseases such as malaria or covid, has presented in the journal Science Advances a similar model for understanding the contagion of suicidal thoughts and behaviors.
Their results, which looked at the spread of these behaviours after the deaths of Robin Williams in 2014 and those of Anthony Bourdain and the designer Kate Spade in 2018, show that there was a significant increase in both cases, although the increase was greater in the actor’s case, perhaps because he was better known and more people could identify with him. In the case of Williams, they estimated that the odds of a person who had never had suicidal thoughts starting to have them in the days after the news broke increased 100-fold, and the risk of a person who already had suicidal thoughts acting on them tripled. After the deaths of Bourdain and Spade, the effect was roughly half that. These figures were calculated from calls to a suicide prevention hotline and official mortality statistics. “In addition, people who already had suicidal thoughts became more contagious and were ten times more likely to influence a person without such thoughts to start thinking about them,” Shaman explains, adding that “these changes were temporary, lasting only a few weeks.”
Juan Pablo Carrasco, psychiatrist at the Provincial Hospital of Castellón, has studied how social media can help contain or exacerbate the contagion and recalls a finding that is important when it comes to preventing the spread of the problem. “30% of people who see suicidal content on the internet, on social media, do not look for it, they are put in front of it by the algorithm, and that is problematic, especially for a person at risk,” he explains. Just as in the case of an infectious outbreak, masks can be used or citizens are asked to collaborate to reduce the transmission of a pathogen, social media should be collaborated with to prevent the spread of this type of content.
Shaman acknowledges that much more work is needed to understand variations in the contagion effect of different types of suicide, how it affects by sex or by country. But these kinds of findings support more targeted efforts, such as public announcements aimed at specific groups or increasing the number of hotline staff when someone particularly prominent commits suicide.
Along with these efforts, which could be directed with models that predict the risk of a specific event, experts have been testing methods for years to reduce the opposite effect. “It is not about ignoring the subject of suicide, but rather dealing with it in the right way,” says Carrasco. Some basic recommendations include not dwelling on the methods of suicide, nor treating the cases as morbid events, and including in the news ways of contacting people who can help those who have suicidal thoughts.
Stories of famous suicides may spur others to desperate action, but they also show that what seems to us to be an irreversible problem from which we can escape by jumping out of the window very rarely is. In 1967, Luigi Tenco and Dalida sang the song “Sanremo” at the Sanremo Festival Hello love, hello. After failing to reach the final of the festival, Tenco, the author of the song, committed suicide in his hotel. In a note, he justified his act: “I do this not because I am tired of life – quite the opposite – but as an act of protest against a public that leads to Me, you and the rose to the final and a commission that selects The revolution. I hope it helps to clarify someone’s ideas.” A few weeks later, Dalida stayed in the hotel room where Tenco stayed when he went to Paris and tried to take her life. She was saved by a waitress. Hello love, hello It ended up being a huge public success and today no one remembers the song that won at San Remo in 1967.
If you need help:
- Suicidal Behavior Hotline Ministry of Health: 024
- Telephone of Hope: 717 003 717
- Prevention, dissemination and training programme of the Spanish Foundation for Suicide Prevention: www.prevensuic.org
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