Destigmatizing Suicide

Sophie Gilbert examines the power of the media in an Atlantic article about the Netflix show 13 Reasons Why. The show depicted a teenage girl’s suicide… and made it look reasonable and even glamorous. Many experts on the subject were concerned that the show would produce more suicide attempts.  The show’s producers replied that they were raising awareness of a problem and encouraging a national conversation. This last rationalization is the first refuge of psycho scoundrels.

Anyway, Gilbert shows that, what with Google searches, we can quantify the increased interest in suicide:

Within days of the release of 13 Reasons Why, Netflix’s teen-oriented drama about a high-school student who takes her own life, the show was being loudly criticized by suicide-prevention experts, who were concerned it could lead to a suicide-contagion effect and a spate of copycat attempts. Now, research published at the end of July argues that those concerns may have been founded. Google queries about suicide rose by almost 20 percent in 19 days after the show came out, representing between 900,000 and 1.5 million more searches than usual regarding the subject.

Search results do not necessarily mean more suicides, but researchers believe that there is a connection. In different terms, do you want to take the risk that your show will offer children a road map to suicide? Or worse, that it will encourage them to take that path.

The study’s authors write that it’s unclear whether an increase in searches regarding suicide meant an increase in actual suicide attempts, although they note that there’s typically a correlation between the two, and that “searches for precise suicide methods increased after the series’ release.” Their analyses, the authors concluded, “suggest 13 Reasons Why, in its present form, has both increased suicide awareness while unintentionally increasing suicidal ideation.”

But, is the contagion effect real? One suspects that it is. Ethan Watters’s book Crazy Like Us showed in detail how media-stoked awareness of certain psychological problems increased their incidence.

Gilbert continued:

In May, I examined how 13 Reasons Why managed to break virtually every rule that exists when it comes to portraying suicide as a subject for teen audiences, featuring a graphic, prolonged scene of the main character’s death in the final episode, and glamorizing her death as a force for positive change in her community. One of the biggest concerns among psychologists and educators was that the show might spark a contagion effect, where increased coverage of suicide in the media leads to a related increase in suicide attempts.

Gilbert is correct to emphasize a point that Watters made:

What the study does show is that art and entertainment have real power, and that as patterns of media consumption change, directors and producers don’t have the luxury of imagining their work in a vacuum. 

The show’s producers have suggested that the show will raise awareness and banish stigmas. Gilbert explained:

Netflix and the producers of 13 Reasons Why, who reportedly disregarded advice from mental-health experts not to release the first season, have repeatedly claimed that the show is raising awareness around the subject of suicide, banishing stigmas and leading to more discussion of a sensitive topic. But as this study implies, focusing public attention on suicide without taking recommended efforts to minimize harm can be counterproductive, and even dangerous. Dr. Dan Reidenberg, the executive director of Suicide Awareness Voices of Education, told me in May that he disagreed with the argument that simply broaching the topic in popular culture is enough. “It has definitely started a conversation about suicide,” he said, “but it hasn’t been the right one.”

You might ask whether we should really want to destigmatize suicide. When you destigmatize something you normalize it. Do we want to make suicide normal or reasonable under certain circumstances?

By the way, what if you took this argument and changed one element. Instead of suicide, what if we were talking about the national media presentation of transgenderism. Does the media mania encourage more children to convince themselves that they are transgender? Does it encourage more physicians to mutilate the bodies of these children with puberty-blocking hormones and gender reassignment surgery? 

After all, transgenderism is a belief... not a fact. Can't the media work to manipulate children's minds to make them believe many things that are untrue.