Vikas Menon, Sujita Kumar Kar, Marthoenis Marthoenis, SM Yasir Arafat, Ginni Sharma, Charanya Kaliamoorthy, Ramdas Ransing, Srijeeta Mukherjee, Jigyansa Ipsita Pattnaik, Nikhilesh B Shirahatti, Natarajan Varadharajan, Susanta Kumar Padhy
Background: Little is known about the factors that determine vulnerability to subsequent suicide in the community following a celebrity suicide. Our objective was to investigate the link between an alleged celebrity suicide and further suicidal behaviour in the community in India. Methods: Relevant news articles that reported suicidal behaviour in the population were retrieved from online news portals of regional and English language newspapers in the immediate month following the actor’s death. A deductive analysis of the retrieved suicide news articles was carried out using a pre-designed data extraction form. Results: A total of 1160 relevant news articles were identified from the local language (n = 985) and English (n = 175) newspapers. For a sizeable percentage of these reports (n = 65, 5.6%), the media reported links with celebrity suicide. Odds of subsequent suicide among young (Odds Ratios [OR] – 9.24), female (OR – 1.94), unemployed (OR – 7.26), those without precipitating life events (OR – 2.94) or mental illness (OR – 1.69) were higher among those with link to celebrity suicide; likewise, odds of death by hanging (OR – 49.84) and leaving a suicide note (OR – 2.03) were higher among those linked to celebrity suicide. English newspapers (OR – 4.23) were more likely to report events linked to celebrity suicide than local language newspapers Conclusion: Persons who died by suicide by hanging after a celebrity suicide are more likely to be young, female, unemployed, have a mental disorder or precipitating life events. Suicide prevention efforts must focus on this group and prevent the same method of suicide like that of the celebrity. © The Author(s) 2020.
Department of Psychiatry, Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Puducherry, Pondicherry, India; Department of Psychiatry, King George’s Medical University, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India; Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health Nursing, Universitas Syiah Kuala, Banda Aceh, Aceh, Indonesia; Department of Psychiatry, Enam Medical College and Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh; Department of Psychiatry, BKL Walalwalkar Rural Medical College, Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, India; Department of Psychiatry, MKCG Medical College, Brahmapur, Odisha, India; Department of Psychiatry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
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