What are your thoughts on copycat suicides?

[Mr. Incapable]

Copycat Suicide:

A copycat suicide is defined as an emulation of another suicide that the person attempting suicide knows about either from local knowledge or due to accounts or depictions of the original suicide on television and in other media.

Examples of celebrities whose suicides have triggered suicide clusters include Ruan Lingyu, the Japanese musicians Yukiko Okada and hide, the South Korean actress Choi Jin-Sil, whose suicide caused suicide rates to rise by 162.3% and Marilyn Monroe, whose death was followed by an increase of 200 more suicides than average for that August month.

Another example could be Bristol University in the U.K. where in a period of 16 months, seven students had died by suicide. This later rose to 11 students between 2016 - 2018.
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We've all heard stories before about increased suicides when a certain celebrity takes their life or multiple suicides happening around the same time at a school or university, but what are your thoughts or opinions about them?

For a specific suicide to influence their thoughts of suicidal ideation, the individual must have existing depression or other related MH issues, right? And I wonder if seeing news about a specific suicide is just a trigger or if it continues to influence their decision all the way from the initial thought to carrying out the suicide itself. How do you think they overcome their SI in a copycat suicide? Do you think they have enough of their own personal trauma and suffering to overcome or push through it? Or perhaps their mindset is just "if [name] can do it, I can do it"?

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I think this topic comes to my mind because I'm frustrated by my own SI and capability. I have enough trauma, suffering, stresses and depression that I should be able to do it without hesitation.. so I wonder how someone who only became actively suicidal following the death of another person was able to successfully CTB.

 

[☆AwaitingEntropy☆]

As someone who has been stuck with ruminating on suicidal ideation for over a decade, I also don't understand copycat suicides, or impulse suicide in general. It doesn't make sense to me how some people can just go for it, without regard to if they'll succeed or fail, who it will hurt, how they'll be found, all of it.

I also can't imagine idolizing someone so much that their suicide would solely and directly lead to my own, without other obvious internal factors influencing it like mental or physical health, financial issues, social life, etc.

From my perspective, it would seem like people who just ctb without much consideration or hesitation may be impulsive or bold on decisions in life, in general? Or may not be mature enough/ have enough foresight to understand the gravity behind their actions?

Those broad stroke descriptions don't sound as polite as I'd like, and it's not my intent to misinterpret life experiences. I just genuinely don't understand how some people make such hasty decisions. It seems very sad to me, when people do that.

 

[Mr. Incapable]

I agree with everything you said. There's also recorded cases where people emulated the suicide of a fictional character from a book or a TV show.

"One of the earliest known associations between the media and suicide arose from Goethe's novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther). Soon after its publication in 1774, young men began to mimic the main character by dressing in yellow pants and blue jackets. In the novel, Werther shoots himself with a pistol after he is rejected by the woman he loves, and shortly after its publication there were reports of young men using the same method to kill themselves in acts of hopelessness.

This resulted in the book being banned in several places. Hence the term "Werther effect", used in the technical literature to designate copycat suicides. The term was coined by researcher David Phillips in 1974"

It baffles me how someone can be so heavily influenced or, as you said, idolise someone so much that it would result in them emulating their own death in the same way. That's why I wonder if these people must have their own existing mental health issues and they use someone else's suicide as fuel for their own? but I don't know as there's definitely cases of over invested fans who have simply just copied their idols suicide because they did it.. I still can't understand how they could do it though, through the survival instinct and everything.. as you said, perhaps they're immature, naive or impulsive but still.. I can't imagine at all how someone is able to do that without considering their actions before or leading up to.. Maybe I'm just an overthinker. I won't lie, I really do envy them. I wish I could be more careless, naive and just do it without much thought..

 

[eternalflame]

I think people must have preexisting mental problems to go with copycat suicide. Personally it makes me think as some sort of justification of suicide. like they could do it so can i.

 

[Euthanza]

Never seen in my 43 years life so far. Yes, I often read the media coverage about it, but no actual details of data that I know ever examined.

In general, people imitates each other about anything, thus copycat suicide method is possibly have corellation -I can imagine all SS members get their own N reserved, how wonderful, but not necessarily a causation. Suicide is complex issue, there's almost never a singular reason for everyone.

I believe there's more chance of genetic cause rather than suicide contagion hypothesis. https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2020/08/31/suicide-family-genetic-risk

 

[FuneralCry]

I think that those people who ctb after a celebrity ctb were probably already suicidal and very likely would have ctb anyway. Maybe hearing about the successful suicide gave them the courage to finally go through it, maybe they thought that if others could overcome the SI, they could too. If someone suicidal hears about someone succeeding with a certain method, it might mean that they are more likely to use that method as they know that it works.

 

[chloramine]

Or perhaps their mindset is just "if [name] can do it, I can do it"?

I think knowing someone else succeeded probably makes it easier as you implied here. I don't think people are going from not suicidal to killing themselves solely due to a celebrity suicide? I don't know for sure and could be wrong- it's just hard to imagine that being the only factor. If how the individual died (like what method) is announced that might give people a proven way to make it happen. Or it could be that someone was already at the end of their rope and it caused them to think of suicide as an option. Most likely the answer varies between individuals.

 

[protocorpse]

I think almost all of us are here on this site because the rest of society has made it so hard to find good resources and there is so much obviously bad information out there.
With celebrities, it might be a factor where people get to see a method actually work and they get to see someone follow through and not be immediately condemned and degraded for their action.
I can't imagine a single case where the thought wasn't on their mind previously and it wasn't equally as hard as it is for everyone else.
I personally like the "I don't want to be around anymore" clip from ITYSL. That doesn't mean I'm trying to emmulate it or that my feelings aren't my own. It's just nice to see something I relate to and can put a tangible piece to something I've always felt.