Resource Tag: CONTAGION (SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY)

In most suicide pacts, two or more related or associated individuals agree to take their lives together at or near the same time and place with similar means and for the same reason. They are rare — less than 1% of all suicides  are part of pacts. Generally, suicide pacts consisting of two individuals occur […]

Social Contagion is defined as the spread of behaviors, attitudes, and affect through crowds and other types of social aggregates from one member to another. Adolescents are prone to social contagion because they may be especially susceptible to peer influence and social media. In this article, we provide a brief review of the most recent […]

Introduction A large body of literature has examined the Werther effect following news reports of suicide, yet much less attention has been paid to the protective Papageno effect. This research explored the causal relationships between news reports of real celebrity suicides (e.g., pop-rock star Chester Bennington) and real non-celebrity “peer” suicides (e.g., college student Madison […]

Background Suicide has become an increasingly concerning problem among soldiers in recent years. Previous research has hypothesized that media-related social contagion effects, termed “Werther effects,” may contribute to military suicide numbers. Unfortunately, there is limited empirical knowledge on such social contagion effects in soldiers. We contribute to the literature by investigating this phenomenon in the context of a specific […]

Background: Given low base rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) in national samples of adolescents, clarifying the sociodemographic and clinical correlates among psychiatric inpatients may afford insights into potential risk factors that predict STBs onset. Method: Adolescents (N = 970; ages 12-19 years) admitted for acute, psychiatric inpatient care completed baseline clinical interviews and self-report measures assessing […]

Background: Suicide clusters at Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) prompted popular and expert speculation of suicide contagion. However, some clustering is to be expected in any random process. Aim: This work tested whether suicide clusters at these two universities differed significantly from those expected under a homogeneous Poisson process, in which suicides occur […]

Background: Since the development of Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) guidelines for the management of suicide clusters, the use of electronic communication technologies has increased dramatically. Aims: To describe an adolescent suicide cluster that drew our attention to the possible role of online social networking and SMS text messaging as sources of contagion after a suicide and obstacles […]

The past 20 years have seen dramatic rises in suicide rates in the United States and other countries around the world. These trends have been identified as a public health crisis in urgent need of new solutions and have spurred significant research efforts to improve our understanding of suicide and strategies to prevent it. Unfortunately, […]

Background: Suicide has become an increasingly concerning problem among soldiers in recent years. Previous research has hypothesized that media-related social contagion effects, termed “Werther effects,” may contribute to military suicide numbers. Unfortunately, there is limited empirical knowledge on such social contagion effects in soldiers. We contribute to the literature by investigating this phenomenon in the context […]

Objective Media reporting of celebrities’ deaths by suicide are prone to suicide contagion effects. The aim of the current study is to examine whether the widely publicized celebrity suicide of Ari Behn in Norway was associated with changes in search activity of suicide-related terms. Method Search activity data for the terms “suicide,” “Ari Behn suicide,” […]

Background: Healthcare workers are at elevated risk for suicide; though it has yet to be studied, this risk may be exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. News media coverage of high-profile suicide is associated with an increased risk of subsequent suicides. No analysis has yet been published of US media practices for reporting on healthcare worker suicides […]

The rising rates of youth suicide in the USA demand thoughtful evidence-based strategies to help schools and communities recover after a suicide loss has occurred. With this chapter, we review research on the experience of suicide bereavement in adolescence, outline what is known about the potential for suicide to spread through social networks and for […]

Background: Media guidelines can influence suicide-related reporting quality and may impact suicide rates. Aim: Our study aimed to investigate the quality of suicide-related reporting after the release of the 2009 Canadian Psychiatric Association (CPA) guidelines and their impact on suicides. Method: A random sample of suicide-related articles (n = 988) were retrieved from 12 major Canadian print/online publications (2002–2015). Articles were […]

Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that an individual dies by suicide every 40 s. Aim: Our aim was to analyze how suicide is portrayed on the visual social media platform Pinterest. Method: This study used a quantitative content analysis of 500 suicide-related Pinterest posts. Content codes included the presence of factors related to the WHO media reporting guidelines. Results: The majority […]

Background: Many studies have demonstrated suicide contagion through mainstream journalism; however, few have explored suicide-related social media events and their potential relationship to suicide deaths. Aims: To determine whether Twitter events were associated with changes in subsequent suicides. Methods: Suicide-related Twitter events that garnered at least 100 tweets originating in Ontario, Canada (July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016) were […]

Research suggests that media adherence to suicide reporting recommendations in the aftermath of a highly publicized suicide event can help reduce the risk of imitative behavior, yet there exists no standardized tool for assessing adherence to these standards. The Tool for Evaluating Media Portrayals of Suicide (TEMPOS) allows media professionals, researchers, and suicide prevention experts […]

Purpose of Review Suicide is a serious healthcare concern worldwide. In the USA, suicide was the tenth leading cause of death prior to 2020 when it was displaced as a result of the death toll from COVID-19. Recent Findings Suicide behavior is the result of the interaction between the individual’s predisposing factors and precipitating factors. […]

Purpose: The risk of suicide is high in the transgender population. Imitative suicide occurs when excess suicidal behavior is observed following news media coverage of suicide. The purpose of this study is to evaluate how often UK newspapers adhere to suicide reporting guidelines designed to minimize imitative suicide when they report the suicides of transgender […]

Suicide in the US has increased in the last decade, across virtually every age and demographic group. Parallel increases have occurred in non-fatal self-harm as well. Research on suicide across the world has consistently demonstrated that suicide shares many properties with a communicable disease, including person-to-person transmission and point-source outbreaks. This essay illustrates the communicable […]

Background: During 2007–2008, media attention focused on a cluster of youth suicides in the UK. There were two peaks (P1, P2) in the volume of newspaper reporting of the deaths. The number of possible suicides was greater than expected at the time of the first peak but not at the time of the second. Aims: To explore any […]

The objective of this study was to examine the impact of widely publicized suicides on the Werther and Papageno Effects using internet search trends. A list of widely publicized suicides from 2010 through 2018 was compiled along with dates of death for each of these individuals. Google.com/trends data were then collected for searches for “how […]

Background: Research suggests that direct exposure to suicidal behaviors and acts of self-harm through social media may increase suicidality through imitation and modeling, particularly in more vulnerable populations. One example of a social media phenomenon that demonstrates how self-harming behavior could potentially be propagated is the blue whale challenge. In this challenge, adolescents and young […]

Though Durkheim argued that strong social relationships protect individuals from suicide, we posit that these relationships have the potential to increase individuals’ vulnerability when they expose them to suicidality. Using three waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we evaluate whether new suicidal thoughts and attempts are in part responses to […]