The impact of media reporting of the suicide of a singer on suicide rates in Taiwan.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: To examine if widespread media reporting of the suicide of a young female singer by charcoal burning increased suicide rates, and to examine whether the suicide induced a high risk of imitation suicide by this method among the young female group. METHODS: Poisson time series autoregression model was applied to examine the relative risk of overall and subgroup (age, gender and method) suicides during the 2-week period after the initiation of media reporting of the celebrity suicide. RESULTS: We found a significant increase (adjusted relative risk = 1.17, p = 0.04) in suicide deaths following media reporting of the celebrity suicide. The increase in suicides was particularly significant among female and young age groups. A marked increase in suicide by charcoal burning among females (adjusted relative risk = 1.44, p < 0.0001) was further observed. CONCLUSIONS: Detailed description of a specific suicide method following celebrity suicides may induce extensive modeling effect, attracting wider age/sex groups to model the method. Our finding provides further support for restraining media reporting of celebrity suicide in suicide prevention.