MEDICAL NEWS TODAY Copycat effect evident following media coverage of a celebrity suicide (I thought this was going to be about Robin Williams, but it’s a short report from South Korea.) Last updated: 4 September 2014 at 1am PST Researchers who analyzed media coverage of the suicide of a national actress in South Korea and its impact on subsequent suicides found that the number of suicide-related articles surged around 80 times in the week after a suicide compared with the week prior. Many articles (37.1%) violated several critical items on the World Health Organization suicide reporting guidelines, like containing a detailed suicide method. The investigators estimated that there were approximately 430 excess suicides during the 4 weeks after her death due to media coverage. This figure is the largest record of cases relating to copycat suicides that has been reported to academic journals, said Weon-Young Lee, co-author of the Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior study. Most gender and age subgroups were at significantly higher risk of suicide.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 01:32:37 +0000
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