Douglas_Knight comments on Open Thread: June 2010 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Morendil 01 June 2010 06:04PM

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Comment author: Douglas_Knight 02 June 2010 05:04:28AM 10 points [-]

Suicide and methods of suicide are contagious, FWIW.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 June 2010 07:40:17AM 9 points [-]

keyword = "werther effect"

Comment author: CannibalSmith 02 June 2010 01:13:19PM 7 points [-]
Comment author: wedrifid 02 June 2010 05:33:48AM 3 points [-]

I was surprised when I read a statistical analysis on national death rates. Whenever there was a suicide by a particular method published in newspapers or on television, deaths of that form spiked in the following weeks. This is despite the copycat deaths often being called 'accidents' (examples included crashed cars and aeroplanes). Scary stuff (or very impressive statistics-fu).

Comment author: JoshuaZ 02 June 2010 05:44:34AM 1 point [-]

Yes, this is connected to the existence of suicide epidemics. The most famous example is the ongoing suicide epidemic over the last fifty years in Micronesia, where both the causes and methods of suicide have been the same (hanging). See for example this discussion.