Do Written Reports of Suicide Induce High-School Students to Believe That Suicidal Contagion Will Occur?

66 consenting high-school students read an account of a high schooler, “John”, with multiple problems, who knew someone who had died (either by suicide or viral illness). Ss then anonymously completed the UCLA Loneliness Scale & a questionnaire about what John (or they in the same situation) might do. Ss saw themselves as immune to suicidal contagion from a written report, but thought that others in distress might be vulnerable if people had reacted sympathetically to a previous suicide.