Robin Williams' death may have caused an increase in suicides

[Marco77]

A team of researchers from Columbia University noticed an increase in suicides after the actor's death, hypothesizing an imitation effect accentuated by excessive media attention to the case

The researchers used suicide data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to develop a mathematical model to predict how many suicide cases would have occurred in the US in 2014 if it had been a typical year. Once the simulation was started, the model held up (that is, it produced outputs consistent with the statistics of the CDC registers) for the period preceding Williams' death, but from August 2014 onwards there was an anomaly: the number of suicides actual results were considerably higher than those predicted by the mathematical model. Around 1,800 more people took their own lives in the first four months after the actor's death, an overall increase of 10% on the average for the period.

Perhaps 'survival instinct' is actually the result of an excessive importance to life. Promoted by the media, religion, books, laws etc etc ... Who knows what would happen if we could talk freely about suicide. What if the cultural taboo on death fell?

 

[Forever Sleep]

I wonder if there was also an increase in partial hangings. But yes, it doesn't surprise me. I have a feeling this is another reason our societies/ governments are so keen on suicide prevention and restricting discussion of suicide. A kind of domino effect- it was ok for them to do it. Why shouldn't I? Type of thing. A bit like the title of this forum- it sanctions it in people's minds I suspect when someone they admired does it.

 

[Marco77]

I wonder if there was also an increase in partial hangings. But yes, it doesn't surprise me. I have a feeling this is another reason our societies/ governments are so keen on suicide prevention and restricting discussion of suicide. A kind of domino effect- it was ok for them to do it. Why shouldn't I? Type of thing. A bit like the title of this forum- it sanctions it in people's minds I suspect when someone they admired does it.

Not only that. There was predominantly an increase in partial hangings. However, there has also been an increase in suicides of people similar in age to the actor's.

 

[Gustav Hartmann]

Wasn´t Robin Williams death an autoerotic accident, concealed as suicide?

It is right that spectacular suicides find many imitators, it seems to be encouraging and legitimating.

A spike in emulation suicides after a widely publicized suicide is known as the Werter effect. 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", is used in the technical literature to designate copycat suicides.

 

[Forever Sleep]

Wasn´t Robin Williams death an autoerotic accident, concealed as suicide?

I hadn't heard that. I believe they found wounds on his wrist where he maybe had tried that method first so- I doubt it was a sex act gone wrong. Poor guy. They diagnosed Lewy Body Dementia after his death. I'm sure the symptoms were incredibly distressing for him.

 

[pariah80]

Perhaps 'survival instinct' is actually the result of an excessive importance to life. Promoted by the media, religion, books, laws etc etc ... Who knows what would happen if we could talk freely about suicide. What if the cultural taboo on death fell?

This is my sentiment. For me, seeing someone like Robin Williams do it made me reconsider all of the platitudes attached to life. Here is someone who had most of the things that a lot of people on here (including me) think would help them "recover." Undoubtedly, Robin Williams had love, money, friends, and a (seemingly) happy life. Yet, look at what happened. All of the love, money, friends, and happiness couldn't stop him from doing it. And I question the diagnosis of Lewy Body Dementia, as this society loves to attach mental illness to suicidality. Yet, if you read the studies, the two are rarely synonymous with each other. That tells me that how I'm feeling is not just exclusive to me. It tells me that suicide is more to do with an actual spiritual problem.

This sick society loves to pathologize anyone and any thinking that is out of kilter with it. It's easy to dismiss suicide as a mental problem. No one wants to be 'crazy.' Everyone wants to be 'normal.' Yet, normal is such a relative term. There's a lot to this instance of suicide. However, I do agree that more people are at least talking about it after Robin Williams. I guess people see that if he would do it, then their feelings and thoughts about life are valid and this situation lends credence to how they feel.

 

[Gustav Hartmann]

Perhaps 'survival instinct' is actually the result of an excessive importance to life. Promoted by the media, religion, books, laws etc etc ... Who knows what would happen if we could talk freely about suicide. What if the cultural taboo on death fell?

The survival instinct is definitive the result of evolution. But if suicide would be considered as something honourable, admirable and exememplary and if suicide would be supported by all kinds of assistance even killing on request, the suicede rate would increase significantly but would definitifely not exceed a certain limit. Especially if young people commit suicide they take their genes out of the gene pool and suicidality would king of die out.