Taipei City Psychiatric Centre, Taipei City Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 2012 Feb;47(2):215-21. doi: 10.1007/s00127-010-0331-y. Epub 2010 Dec 17.
To examine if widespread media reporting of the suicide of a young female singer by charcoal burning increased suicide rates, and to examine whether the suicide induced a high risk of imitation suicide by this method among the young female group.
Poisson time series autoregression model was applied to examine the relative risk of overall and subgroup (age, gender and method) suicides during the 2-week period after the initiation of media reporting of the celebrity suicide.
We found a significant increase (adjusted relative risk = 1.17, p = 0.04) in suicide deaths following media reporting of the celebrity suicide. The increase in suicides was particularly significant among female and young age groups. A marked increase in suicide by charcoal burning among females (adjusted relative risk = 1.44, p < 0.0001) was further observed.
Detailed description of a specific suicide method following celebrity suicides may induce extensive modeling effect, attracting wider age/sex groups to model the method. Our finding provides further support for restraining media reporting of celebrity suicide in suicide prevention.
探讨一位年轻女歌手通过烧炭自杀的广泛媒体报道是否会增加自杀率，并研究这种自杀方式是否会在年轻女性群体中引发高风险的模仿自杀。
采用泊松时间序列自回归模型，在媒体报道名人自杀后的两周内，检验总体和亚组（年龄、性别和方法）自杀的相对风险。
我们发现，在媒体报道名人自杀后，自杀死亡人数显著增加（调整后的相对风险=1.17，p=0.04）。自杀的增加在女性和年轻年龄组中尤为显著。进一步观察到，女性通过烧炭自杀的人数明显增加（调整后的相对风险=1.44，p<0.0001）。
名人自杀后对特定自杀方法的详细描述可能会引起广泛的模仿效应，吸引更广泛的年龄/性别群体来模仿这种方法。我们的发现为防止媒体对名人自杀的报道以预防自杀提供了进一步的支持。
