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Research

Research demonstrates that depictions of violence and self-harm can increase the likelihood of copycat behaviors.  Adolescents are a vulnerable and highly impressionable group, frequently copying others’ behaviors or reacting in response to things they have seen.  Below is a list of some of the research in this area.

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  1. Arendt, F., Scherr, S., Till, B., Prinzellner, Y., Hines, K., & Niederkrotenthaler, T. (2017). Suicide on TV: minimising the risk to vulnerable viewers. British Medical Journal, 358, j3876.

  2. A review of the literature regarding fictional film and television portrayals of mental illness found at:  http://www.mindframe-media.info/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/7746/A-review-of-the-literature-regarding-film-and-television-drama-portrayals-of-mental-illness.pdf

  3. Australia Department of Health and Aged Care. (1999). Resource kit for the reporting and portrayal of suicide and mental illness. Retrieved from https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1909633 Google Scholar

  4. Ayers, J. W., Althouse, B. M., Leas, E. C., Dredze, M., & Allem, J. P. (2017). Internet searches for suicide following the release of 13 Reasons Why. JAMA Internal Medicine, 177, 1527-1529.

  5. Bakwin, H. (1957). Suicide in children and adolescents. Journal of Pediatrics, 50, 749-769. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  6. Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84, 191-215. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

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  8. Barraclough, B., & Hughes, J. (1987). Suicide: Clinical and epidemiological studies. London: Croom Helm. Google Scholar

  9. Barraclough, B.M., Shepherd, D., & Jennings, C. (1977). Do newspaper reports of coroners’ inquests incite people to commit suicide? British Journal of Psychiatry, 131, 528-532. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  10. Berman, A.L. (1988). Fictional depiction of suicide in television films and imitation effects. American Journal of Psychiatry, 145, 982-986. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  11. Biblarz, A., Brown, R.M., Biblarz, D.N., Pilgrim, M., & Baldree, B.F. (1991). Media influence on attitudes toward suicide. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 21, 374-384. Google Scholar, Medline

  12. Blumenthal, S., & Bergner, L. (1973). Suicide and newspaper: A replicated study. American Journal of Psychiatry, 130, 468-471. Google Scholar, Medline

  13. Bollen, K.A., & Phillips, D.P. (1981). Suicidal motor vehicle fatalities in Detroit: A replication. American Journal of Sociology, 87, 404-412. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  14. Bollen, K.A., & Phillips, D.P. (1982). Imitative suicides: A national study of the effect of television news stories. American Sociological Review, 47, 802-809. Google Scholar, Crossref

  15. Brent, D.A., Kerr, M.M., Goldstein, C., Bozigar, J., Wartella, M.E., & Allan, M.J. (1989). An outbreak of suicide and suicidal behavior in high school. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 28, 918-924. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  16. Brent, D.A., Perper, J.A., Kolko, D.J., & Zelenak, J.P. (1988). The psychological autopsy: methodological considerations for the study of adolescent suicide. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 27(3), 362-366. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  17. Brent, D.A., Perper, J.A., Moritz, G., Allman, C., Friend, A., Roth, C., Schweers, J., Balach, L., & Baugher, M. (1993). Psychiatric risk factors for adolescent suicide: A case-control study. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 32(3), 521-529. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  18. Canetto, S.  S., & Lester, D.  (1995). Women and suicidal behavior: Issues and dilemmas. In S.  S. Canetto & D.  Lester (Eds.), Women and suicidal behavior(pp. 3-8). New York: Springer.

  19. Canetto, S. S., & Lester, D.  (1998). Gender, culture and suicidal behavior.  Transcultural Psychiatry, 35, 163-191.

  20. Conwell, Y., Duberstein, P.R., Cox, C., Herrmann, J.H., Forbes, N.T., & Caine, E.D. (1996). Relationships of age and axis I diagnoses in victims of completed suicide: A psychological autopsy study. American Journal of Psychiatry, 153, 1001-1008. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  21. Craddock, J. (2002) Videohound’s golden movie retriever. Farmington Hills, MI: The Gale Group. Google Scholar

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  23. Davidson, L.E., Rosenberg, M.L., Mercy, J.A., Franklin, J., & Simmons, J.T. (1989). An epidemiologic study of risk factors in two teenage suicide clusters. Journal of the American Medical Association, 262, 2687-2692. Google Scholar, Crossref

  24. Etzersdorfer, E., & Sonneck, G. (1998). Preventing suicide by influencing mass-media reporting: The Viennese experience 1980-1996. Archives of Suicide Research, 4, 67-74. Google Scholar, Crossref

  25. Etzersdorfer, E., Sonneck, G., & Nagel-Kuess, S. (1992). Newspaper reports and suicide. New England Journal of Medicine, 327, 502-503. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  26. Etzersdorfer, E., Voracek, M., & Sonneck, G. (2001). A dose-response relationship of imitational suicides with newspaper distribution. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 35, 251. Google Scholar, Link

  27. Fawcett, J. (1990). Targeting treatment in patients with mixed symptoms of anxiety and depression. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 51(Suppl.), 40-43. Google Scholar, Medline

  28. Fekete, S., & Macsai, E. (1990). Hungarian suicide models, past and present. In G. Ferrari (Ed.), Suicidal behavior and risk factors (pp. 149-156). Bologna: Monduzzi Editore. Google Scholar

  29. Fekete, S., & Schmidtke, A. (1995). The impact of mass media reports on suicide and attitudes toward self-destruction: Previous studies and some new data from Hungary and Germany. In B.L. Mishara (Ed.), The impact of suicide (pp. 142-155). New York: Springer. Google Scholar

  30. Fekete, S., Schmidtke, A., Takahashi, Y., Etzersdorfer, E., Upanne, M., & Osvath, P. (2001). Mass media, cultural attitudes, and suicide: Results of an international comparative study. Crisis: Journal of Crisis Intervention & Suicide, 22, 170-172. Google Scholar, Crossref

  31. Ferguson, Christopher J. 2015. “Does Media Violence Predict Societal Violence? It Depends on What You Look at and When.” Journal of Communication 65 (1): E1–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12129.

  32. Feuer, V., & Havens, J. (2017). Teen suicide: Fanning the flames of a public health crisis. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 56, 723-724.

  33. Fishbain, D.A., D’Achille, L., Barsky, S., & Aldrich, T.E. (1984). A controlled study of suicide pacts. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 45, 154-157. Google Scholar, Medline

  34. Fowler, B.P. (1986). Emotional crisis imitating television. Lancet, 1, 1036-1037. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

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  36. Gibbons, R.D., Clark, D.C., & Fawcett, J.A. (1990). A statistical method for evaluating suicide clusters and implementing cluster surveillance. American Journal of Epidemiology, 132, 183-191. Google Scholar, Crossref

  37. Gibson, J.A.P., & Range, L.M. (1991). Are written reports of suicide and seeking help contagious? High schoolers’ perceptions. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 21, 1517-1523. Google Scholar, Crossref

  38. Gould, M.S. (1990). Suicide clusters and media exposure. In S.J. Blumenthal & D.J. Kupfer (Eds.), Suicide over the life cycle: Risk factors, assessment, and treatment of suicidal patients (pp. 517-532). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press. Google Scholar

  39. Gould, M.S. (2001). Suicide and the media. In H. Hendin & J.J. Mann (Eds.), Suicide prevention: Clinical and scientific aspects (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, pp. 200-224). New York: New York Academy of Sciences. Google Scholar, Crossref

  40. Gould, M.S., & Davidson, L. (1988). Suicide contagion among adolescents. In A.R. Stiffman & R.A. Feldman (Eds.), Advances in adolescent mental health (pp. 29-59). Greenwich, CT: JAI. Google Scholar

  41. Gould, M.S., Fisher, P., Parides, M., Flory, M., & Shaffer, D. (1996). Psychosocial risk factors of child and adolescent completed suicide. Archives of General Psychiatry, 53, 1155-1162. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  42. Gould, M.S., Forman, J., Kleinman, M., & Wallenstein, S. (1995). Psychological autopsy of cluster suicides in adolescents. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, New Orleans, LA. Google Scholar

  43. Gould MS, Marrocco FA, Hoagwood K, Kleinman M, Amakawa L, Altschuler E. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 12. Vol. 48. 2009. Service use by at-risk youths after school-based suicide screening; pp. 1193–1201.

  44. Media Contagion and Suicide Among the Young MADELYN GOULD Columbia University PATRICK JAMIESON DANIEL ROMER University of Pennsylvania found at http://www.columbia.edu/itc/hs/medical/bioethics/nyspi/material/MediaContagionAndSuicide.pdf

  45. Gould, M.S., Petrie, K., Kleinman, M., & Wallenstein, S. (1994). Clustering of attempted suicide: New Zealand national data. International Journal of Epidemiology, 23, 1185-1189. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  46. Gould, M.S., & Shaffer, D. (1986). The impact of suicide in television movies: Evidence of imitation. New England Journal of Medicine, 315, 690-694. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  47. Gould, M.S., Shaffer, D., & Kleinman, M. (1988). The impact of suicide in television movies: Replication and commentary. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 18, 90-99. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  48. Gould, M.S., Wallenstein, S., & Kleinman, M. (1990). Time-space clustering of teenage suicide. American Journal of Epidemiology, 131, 71-78. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  49. Gould, M.S., Wallenstein, S., Kleinman, M.H., O’Carroll, P., & Mercy, J. (1990). Suicide clusters: An examination of age-specific effects. American Journal of Public Health, 80, 211-212. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

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  52. Hawton, K., Simkin, S., Deeks, J.J., O’Connor, S., Keen, A., Altman, D.G., et al. (1999). Effects of a drug overdose in a television drama on presentations to hospital for self-poisoning: Time series and questionnaire study. British Medical Journal, 318, 972-977. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  53. Hawton, K., & Williams, K. (2001). The connection between media and suicidal behavior warrants serious attention. Crisis, 22, 137-140. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  54. Holding, T.A. (1974). The B.B.C. “Befrienders” series and its effects. British Journal of Psychiatry, 124, 470-472. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  55. Holding, T.A. (1975). Suicide and “The Befrienders.” British Medical Journal, 3, 751-753. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  56. Insel BJ, Gould MS. Psychiatric Clinics of North America. 2. Vol. 31. 2008. Impact of modeling on adolescent suicidal behavior; pp. 293–316.

  57. Ishii, K. (1991). Measuring mutual causation: Effect of suicide news on suicides in Japan. Social Science Research, 20, 188-195. Google Scholar, Crossref

  58. Jamieson, P. (2002). Changes in popular culture portrayal of youth suicide: 1950-2000. Dissertation submitted to University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Google Scholar

  59. Jonas, K. (1992). Modeling and suicide: A test of the Werther effect. British Journal of Social Psychology, 31, 295-306. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

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  64. Moscicki, E.K. (1999). Epidemiology of suicide. In D.G. Jacobs (Ed.), The Harvard Medical School guide to suicide assessment and intervention (pp. 40-51). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Google Scholar

  65. Motto, J.A. (1970). Newspaper influence on suicide. Archives of General Psychiatry, 23, 143-148. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

  66. Ness, D.E., & Pfeffer, C.R. (1990). Sequelae of bereavement resulting from suicide. American Journal of Psychiatry, 147, 279-285. Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline

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  68. Nock, M.K., & Marzuk, P.M. (1999). Murder-suicide: Phenomenology and clinical implications. In D.G. Jacobs (Ed.), The Harvard Medical School guide to suicide assessment and intervention (pp. 188-209). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Google Scholar

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  75. Phillips, D.P., & Carstensen, L.L. (1988). The effect of suicide stories on various demographic groups, 1968-1985. In R. Maris (Ed.), Understanding and preventing suicide: Plenary papers of the first combined meeting of the AAS and IASP (pp. 100-114). New York: Guilford. Google Scholar, Crossref

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  81. Pirkis, J., Francis, C., Blood, R.W., Burgess, P., Morley, B., Stewart, A., et al. (2002). Reporting of suicide in the Australian media. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 36, 190-197. Google Scholar, Link

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