SafetyIssues Personal and Public Safety News Articles: Do Some Websites Abet Suicide?

Do Some Websites Abet Suicide?
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Staff writer for safetyissues.com on 04/11/08 12:15:00
 
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.