After Robin Williams' Death, Suicides In The US Increased By 10 Percent
A newly published research marks a nearly 10 percent increase in suicides in the first four months following the death of actor Robin Williams.
The Academy Award-winning comedian died in his own home by hanging on Aug. 11, 2014. He was 63 years old.
The Research
"This is the first study to examine the consequences of a celebrity suicide in the digital era," lead author David S. Fink says to CNN. Fink is a post-doctoral researcher in epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
Fink and his team used data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dating from January 1999 to December 2015.
According to the researchers' analysis, about 16,849 suicides were expected in the period August to December 2014. Instead, there were 18,690 reported suicides in the four months that followed Williams's death. This is a marked increase of 1,841 or 9.85 percent.
This increase was observed in different demographics: males, females, and all the age groups. However, a higher number of expected suicides was found among men and in the 30 to 44 age group.
Additionally, the researchers found a 32 percent increase in suffocation suicides, which includes hanging, Williams's method of choice. Other methods only increased by 3 percent.
Media Coverage Of Suicides
Copycat suicides is a phenomenon that have long been observed when a famous personality takes his or her own life. While there's no proof that Williams' suicide encouraged a slew of copycats, the steep increase of suicides and the frequency of media reports on both suicides and Williams during the period following his death do suggest a connection.
Fink points out that extensive media coverage may have given the "capability necessary for a high-risk segment of the US population, middle-aged men in despair, to move from suicidal ideation to attempt."
It's not just the frequency of the reports that stood out. While the World Health Organization designed media guidelines on reporting suicide, Fink and his team discovered during their research that many traditional media outlets drifted from these guidelines when Williams died.
"Sadly, there were all too many examples of unfortunate presentations of the case of Robin Williams' suicide," director Lahrs Mehlum of the Norway's Centre for Suicide Prevention tells Washington Post. "Many journalists failed to mention the huge health problems Williams struggled with (both mentally and physically), but rather portrayed a glorified version of the event. This is not according to international guidelines for media reporting of suicide."
He adds that researchers and policy makers should aim for a better understanding of the roles of traditional and social media on suicide to mitigate the lives lost.
The study is published in the journal PLOS One.
