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Do Some Websites Abet Suicide?

Staff writer for safetyissues.com

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Suicide, why?

The Internet has played an increasingly influential role in modern living. This significant influence may extend to suicide attempts — both in the outcome and in influencing people to make the attempt. This startling conclusion comes from a research team whose findings were recently published in the British Medical Journal.

The five-member team was composed of doctors and epidemiologists from the universities of Bristol, Oxford and Manchester. The team pointed out that methods of suicide shown on television and film have long been proven to have a direct link to actual methods people use to end their lives.

Such images seen on television by people inclined to suicide can have a bearing on whether they survive the attempt or die, because one suicide method has greater chances of resulting in death than other methods.

The media influence can be extended to Internet chat rooms and other sites. Potentially, they are equally influential as television, not least because of their unrestricted access. There are websites that abet suicide, and they are much easier to access than websites that discourage or try to prevent suicide.

The research team used the four most popular search engines to look for these websites. The phrases used were quite straightforward, e.g. suicide methods or pain-free suicide or effective suicide methods.

Since the tendency of most people is to click on the topmost hits, the team evaluated the 10 sites that were first presented by each engine. With this technique, the team generated 240 sites worldwide to evaluate.

• Nearly 40 sites (or 17 percent) actively encouraged and facilitated suicide, and gave detailed descriptions of suicide methods. A number of the sites used “fashionable terms” (as called by researchers) to describe suicide.

• Another 40 or so sites gave personal accounts of suicide experiences but did not give any direct encouragement.

• Ten percent (24 sites) provided suicide information in a sober, factual manner.

• Some sites (13 percent) tried to prevent suicide and to offer other means of addressing problems to vulnerable people. Another 12 percent actively discouraged or forbade suicide. However, these sites were normally presented at the bottom of the list and were less likely to be clicked.

The team expressed surprise at the consistent ability of some pro-suicide sites to get top search rankings across all search engines and also the details provided on suicide methods — including amount of pain, degree of certainty and speed of each method.

They also warned about the danger of chat rooms being used to facilitate suicide pacts or in some other way exert pressure on young people to commit suicide.

Safety Tip:

• Talk with your teenage child. Most vulnerable people need someone to talk with and provide support. They’re more likely to access a how-to-commit-suicide site rather than a help site on the Internet.