Enlarge / Katherine Langford starred as Hannah Baker, a teen who dies by suicide, within the controversial Netflix sequence 13 Causes Why. (credit score: Netflix)
The controversial 2017 Netflix sequence 13 Causes Why sparked years of contradictory educational research on whether or not the present sparked an increase in teen suicides (suicide contagion, or copycat suicides). Some confirmed damaging impacts, whereas others discovered useful impacts. Essentially the most damning examine appeared in 2019, which reported a pointy enhance in suicide charges amongst younger folks between the ages of 10 and 17 within the months after the primary season’s launch—though it stopped in need of discovering a direct causal hyperlink between the 2. In response, the streaming service edited out the unique graphic three-minute bathtub suicide scene that ignited the controversy.
However Dan Romer, a psychologist on the College of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Coverage Middle who research media and social influences on adolescent well being, was skeptical about that 2019 examine. His newest paper on the topic, revealed within the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Habits, discovered a seasonal sample to teen suicide charges that appears to coincide with the college 12 months, declining in the summertime months. Taking this and different elements into consideration successfully eradicated the contagion impact reported within the 2019 paper. (For an in-depth have a look at the controversy and an summary of a number of of these research, see my 2021 characteristic.)
As I’ve written beforehand, suicide contagion is a phenomenon by which publicity to suicide inside a household, amongst pals, or by means of the media could also be related to elevated suicidal habits. There have been many research over time on suicide contagion—typically known as the “Werther impact,” after the younger protagonist of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1774 novel, The Sorrows of Younger Werther. Nevertheless, the extent to which fictional portrayals of suicide could contribute to suicide contagion stays a matter of real educational debate.
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