The Werther Effect of Two Celebrity Suicides: an Entertainer and a Politician

Jae-Hyun Kim, Eun-Cheol Park, Jung-Mo Nam, SoHee Park, Jaelim Cho, Sun-Jung Kim, Jae-Woo Choi and Eun Cho

PLOS ONE, 2013, vol. 8, issue 12, 1-

Abstract: Purpose: Suicide is a major health problem in Korea. Extensive media exposure of celebrity suicide may induce imitative suicide, a phenomenon called the Werther effect. We examined the increased suicide risk following the suicides of an entertainer and a politician, and identified the relative suicide risks. Methods: News articles about the celebrity suicides were obtained from three major newspapers and analysed for quantitative and qualitative features. Imitative suicide risk was investigated by applying a Poisson time series autoregression model with suicide mortality data from the National Statistics Office for 1.5 years before and 1.5 years after each celebrity’s suicide. The period with a significantly increased number of suicides immediately after the celebrity’s suicide determined the Werther effect band. The relative risk during this period was examined for different ages, genders, and suicide methods. Results: News reports were more numerous and they contained more positive definitions about the entertainer’s suicide. The risk of suicide deaths rose markedly after both celebrity suicides. However, the Werther effect band was longer for the entertainer (6 weeks) than for the politician (4 weeks). The relative suicide risk was significant for almost all ages and both genders during that of both individuals. Use of the same suicide method was a prominent risk factor after both celebrity suicides. Conclusions: Our results confirm the existence of imitative suicide behaviours, suggesting a facilitation effect of media reports. Guidelines for responsible media reporting need to be implemented to enhance public mental health in Korea.

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0084876 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 84876&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0084876

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0084876

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().