TV coverage linked to teen suicides Teenage suicides have received to a great degree attention on television in the past small in number years.

TV coverage linked to teen suicides

Teenage suicides have received to a great degree attention on television in the past small in number years. Two teams of researchers now report that the tube may play an active part in these tragedies. Television freshs coverage and fictional movies about suicide, they say, appear to trigger a temporary increase in the number of teenagers who kill themselves.

While "imitation suicides" are widely assumed to take place, as in newly come instances of clustered teenage suicides in several suburban communities, an researchers say the new studies do not besides establish a clear statistical link between television and the adolescent suicide rate.

The investigators involved in the frames however, see important implications in the data, which were published in the clan 11 NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE. "[Our results] indicate that the national rate of suicide among teenagers rises significantly just after television of recent origins or feature stories about suicide," write sociologists David P Phillips and Lundie L Carstensen of the University of California at San Diego. This increase, they add, is proportional to the amount of network coverage.

The researchers examined suicide rates in the seven days following 38 stories or pairs of stories that appeared onward the three networks between 1973 and 1979 The stories were a mixed bag, including pieces forward the suicides of television actor Freddie Prinze, an unnamed teenage girl and a man who had put to deathed several people; features included programs forward "suicide and teenagers" and "suicide and prison."

onward average, in the seven days following a single suicide story, there were about three more suicides than would normally be awaited The total of 1666 suicides following the 38 stories was 110 suicides greater than would otherwise have been look fored Suicides among teenage girls during the week-long "danger period" rose by dint of 13 percent, in contrast to a 5 percent increase among teenage boys

If the exhibit tos had mainly quickened the pace of suicides among teenagers who were already about to kill themselves, say the researchers, suicide rates would have dropp steeply after the observation period, if it be not that they did not. Seasonal variations in suicide, they add, were corrected for in the results

In the secondary study, Madelyn S. Gould and David Shaffer of Columbia University in modern York City followed suicide rates in the greater modern York area two weeks before and after four made-for-television movies forward suicide, in 1984 and 1985 An exces of six suicides, compared with the number predicted, occurr after three of the broadcasts. frameed nationwide, this corresponds to about 80 extra suicides linked to the movies among 10- to 19-year-olds.

The individual movie not linked to an increase, says Gould focused forward reactions of surviving family members and included educational information about preventing suicide.

In an accompanying editorial, Harvard Medical exercise psychiatrist Leon Eisenberg says the studies indicate that "it is timely to ask whether there are measures that should be undertaken to limit media coverage of suicide." He notes, nevertheless that suicide rates are importantly affected by way of individual risk factors, such as depression, alcohol and physic addiction and social withdrawal, and by means of other triggering events, including unwanted pregnancy, family crisis and los of or rejection from an important person.

"I'm prepared to believe that cases of imitative suicide present itself after television programs," comments Stanford University sociologist James N Baron, "but it's difficult to establish that link statistically." For instance, he points not at home that the two new studies are unable to identify whether the teenagers who killed themselves actually saw the television exhibit tos in question. Other studies, says Baron, find varying drifts of media coverage on following suicide rates.

It is curious, adds sociologist Steven Stck of Auburn (Ala.) University, that the television programs in the San Diego researchers' subject of attention contain few instances of teenage suicide. psychological studies, he says, indicate that tribe imitate the actions of others greatest in quantity similar to themselves. The weights of programs about teenage suicides may ne to be studied separately, possesss Stack, and compared with the impact of other patterns of suicide coverage, such as that focusing upon the elderly or on celebrities.

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