Increase in suicides the months after the death of Robin Williams in the US | Hacker News Reader

Increase in suicides the months after the death of Robin Williams in the US

journals.plos.org

69 pointsDanBC20 comments

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A list of suicide hotlines are available here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/wiki/hotlines

Here are the numbers for the United States:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255 (TALK) Veterans press 1 to reach specialised support.

Online Chat: http://chat.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/GetHelp/LifelineCh...

Crisis Text Line: Text "START" to 741-741

Youth-Specific services (voice/text/chat/email) from the Boys' Town National Hotline: http://www.yourlifeyourvoice.org/Pages/ways-to-get-help.aspx

Spanish: 1-800-SUICIDA

Auto "accidents” also increase:

Three days after a publicized suicide, automobile fatalities increase by 31%. The more the suicide is publicized, the more the automobile fatalies increase.

From abstract of https://www.jstor.org/stable/2778220

This is often called the Werther Effect. It may be interesting to look at the inverse as well: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18082110 i.e. a policy prohibiting publicizing suicides seems to correlate with a decrease in suicides.

Fun Fact: active shooter incidents (often spree-killings, culminating in suicide, capital punshment or life in prison) are still sensationalized, despite an awareness of this general principle being readily acknowleged. Is the viewer response just too lucrative?

It’s more of a multi-party Prisoner’s Dilemma - there is no way to enforce an embargo, significant penalties to an “old school” news organization not sharing all the information that the hungry can’t-afford-to-be-ethical outfits will likely publish, and vice versa.

An industry organization or regulatory body that could enforce adding language encouraging sensitive viewers to seek counseling may be the only sustainable band-aid here.

Social media made it ultimately futile anyway. It's incredibly hard to coordinate every possible news outlet. Now try and coordinate every possible Twitter user in the area.

There are always tradeoffs. Do we favour free speech or are we ok with triggering an event that correlate with a temporary increase in suicides?

These results are not surprising. Until I was able to contextualize his suicide with respect to Lewy body dementia and the symptoms thereof, the death of Robin Williams really got to me and made me feel lower than I had in years. I am still incredibly saddened that he's not around, but again, I am better able to put it in context.

I had a similar experience. I binged and binged on hours of youtube videos of him. It was crazy how much I missed a man I have never met but who I felt so close to from movies and stand up.

I realized why I had such a respect for Robin Williams: he suffered so much, but whilst suffering he thought of others. He did countless shows for the troops overseas. He brought them joy when they were at war. There’s also a video of him befriending a gorilla who could do sign language. He described how remarkable that experience was. It showed he cared for animals which resonated with me. And probably lastly are some selfish reasons: he made me laugh, and laugh a lot. But mostly he named his daughter Zelda — he was such a nerd and an avid gamer.

Seconded. It hit me incredibly hard.

Same. Medication has really smoothed out the rough spots for me, but Robin taking his life really raised the water level, so to speak.

After getting past it, I thought about the effect someone (whom I'd never met) taking committing suicide had on me. I've since expanded that thought to my family, which has been constructive for me.

Most types of rapid or early-onset dementia are just devastating to everyone -- you, those you love, and those who love you -- and if you know that that is going to happen to you and 'bystanders'... Well, there are no good choices, but I think I think his choice is pretty understandable, honestly.

(Also very saddened by his death, FWIW.)

I was completely unaware that he suffered from DLB. That is (oddly) kind of comforting.

Background: His death occurred in the middle of an emotionally tumultuous time in my life wherein three close friends of mine also committed suicide, one in an alcohol-fueled depression, and the other two the result of chronic, long-term untreated depression. After that, I began to believe that there could be some subtle, insidious cause for the sudden rash of suicides (e.g. perhaps my generation’s excessive computer/tv/mobile use is having a suicidal-depression-inducing effect). So when I say “comforting”, I mean that it’s nice to see some evidence against that hypothesis

This is true for me too. As a person with depression, one of the things I'm told is 'hang in there, it gets better'. When Robin died, my initial thought was "He was 63, It doesn't get better"

Finding out that the depression didn't win was fairly important to me.

Not really about the story, but I met Robin one time, and he was so friendly everyone around him was happier for it. It's almost like he felt it was his duty to help others not feel like he felt inside.

He signed a football John Elway threw to me while I was on a roof watching the show (USO), and I still have that football. (Also signed by Elway and Leeann Tweeden)

The effect size isn't large, and the potential cofounding correlations are infinite. This doesn't seem like a good study.

I voted you up, then saw Fig 2 and changed my mind. Looks fairly large. Sure, might be chance, but looks like a pretty large effect to me, not sure what you'd call large if that isn't. [<-- highly scientific comment]

Celebrity culture gone way too far.

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