Year: 1977 Source: Psychology Today, v.11, no.5, (October 1977), p.40-43 SIEC No: 19830495

This short article reviews the research of David Phillips, a University of California sociologist. Phillips had shown that suicides increase after a suicide has been publicized in the newspapers & that they increase in proportion to the amount of publicity. An analysis of the number of car accidents before & after publicized suicides suggest that imitative suicides are disguised & recorded as motor vehicle accidents. The biggest rise in fatalities came just after the stories were published.