Don’t publicise suicides

was startled when I read the headline of the Gulf News report, ‘Warning over suicidal show’s effect on students’, because I was reading about a phenomenon related to this type of incident, and I was watching a video on the philosophy of suicide. The coincidence was unreal. What saddened me was that the article didn’t even state one word to the most important and interesting part of this phenomena: Social proof. I was shocked that many psychologists mentioned by the article did not speak of this phenomenon. This is the core reason for the increase in suicidal tendencies.

A book published in 1774, The Sorrows of Young Werther ,is the story of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who commits suicide. What’s interesting about the story is that once the book became famous, the suicide rate throughout Europe significantly surged. This caused several countries to ban this book. Professor David Philips termed this phenomenon the “Werther effect” (also known as copycat suicide). You might be wondering why people fall for this, it’s just a story, why would people emulate suicide when this show or book doesn’t promote suicide? But social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect the correct behaviour for a given situation. When these suicide stories are heavily publicised, people who have suicidal thoughts would tend to imitate them.

Should this television show be banned? I haven’t watched or even heard about it before the Gulf News report. I would suggest the show should be banned, because suicide rates would increase remarkably as many studies about this phenomenon have shown. We need to try to convey to people who have suicidal tendencies that everyone is there to help him or her.