The Media 's Influence On Suicide Rates

Attempting suicide is an epidemic in the United States; especially when 41% of transgender individuals have attempted suicide compared 1.6% of the general population (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation). Due to this, the question of whether or not transgender youth have a harder, more straining adolescence than their cisgender counterparts rises. Although adolescence can be hard on everyone, experiences such as a school environment, puberty, laws that guarantee protection, family and social acceptance of transgender youth are harder than those of their cisgender counterparts (harder does not necessarily mean correlate with strenuous, the use of harder is aiming more towards different, costly, and possibly more confusing). The revolution for transgender lives is just beginning, change is happening. But in order for change to occur, adequate information on the material needs to be discussed and terminology must be defined and questions must be answered. Questions such as: what do the terms transgender and cisgender actually mean? Why is it important to know the difference between the two terms? What is the difference between transsexual and transgender?

Consumers are aware of the impact of media on community behaviour as a whole. A conducted survey shows careless media reporting can trigger suicidal behaviour to consumers. The study concludes that the influence of suicide reporting may not be limited to harmful effects; instead, coverage of positive coping in adverse situations, like media reports about suicidal ideation, can have protective effects (Niederkrotenthaler T et al 2010). When grunge icon Kurt Cobain of Nirvana committed suicide with a shotgun to his head, it created an explosion for copycat suicides. After a month following his death, 18 suicides were recorded in Seattle including 28 year old obvious copycat who have just attended a candle light vigil a few days after Cobain’s body was found (Klass T 1996).

In an attempt to disprove the psychological hypothesis, he sought evidence that would identify the social nature of suicide. This was facilitated through the availability of suicide-rate statistical data collated from a variety of societies located within European countries. From this quantitative research, now termed ‘multivariate analysis’, he devised three conclusions. Within single societies the incidence or rate of suicide remains constant over time, the suicide rate varies between societies and that the suicide rate varies between different groups within the same society. However, “Durkheim did not deny that particular circumstances would lead to a particular person taking his or her own life, but personal reasons could not account for the suicide rate” (Haralambos et al, 1995, pp819:2). In an endeavour to refute the claim that there was a relationship between the incidents of insanity and the suicide rate, he examined data compiled from members of the Jewish community who had reportedly higher rate of insanity than other religious groups. On conclusion, he found that they had considerable lower rates of suicide (Durkheim, 1952: 166-168). He discovered that a collective tendency or social force, beyond the

Suicide is a controversial topic in today’s society, as some individuals believe it causes no effect on other individuals. This statement, however, is false because not only will it affect your family but it effects your colleagues, friends, and even old classmates. One of the hardest things that a community can face is the loss of a young person’s life, as it effects everyone in the community. This death can lead to multiple community members feeling guilty, not only for not having prevented the suicide, but also due to distress, anger, and confusion. More specifically, in regards to family members, it can lead to mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, divorce, and are at higher risk to commit suicide themselves (Tracy, 2016, para. 3,4,5,6,7,8,9). The distress not only will have short term effects but it will

Despite the lack of research done by sociologists on the topic of suicide, little is known about what societies perspective of it. In this research paper, the sociological aspects of suicide are going to be brought up. The way suicide deals with deviance and how a particular Sociologist studied different theories. The analyzation of four journal articles that are cited back up my answer in my research paper. My research question is, Does the Netflix series, 13 Reasons Why impact societies viewpoint on the sociological issues of suicide? Providing evidence to prove this true through the general thoughts and knowledge I have cumulated in Introduction in Sociology. Oddly enough there is not much research in the general category of suicide in sociology

Besides that, the Australian Press has made up a decision to evaluate the standard of media when dealing with suicide cases (Canning 2011 para. 6). Julian Disney, the Council of Australian Press, stated, “There are a lot of vulnerable people (mental health issues) that can be affected by these kind of news and it is common for those people to copy it” (Canning 2011 para. 3-4).

Using material from Item A and elsewhere, assess different sociological explanations of suicide. (21 marks)

Suicide is the act of killing yourself. It is the 11th leading cause of death in America (CDC 2009). I have never had any intentions on committing suicide and I never really understood why people commit suicide that’s why I chose this topic to help me understand what problems people go through that makes them do such a thing. Sociology is the study of social behavior and the culture of humans. There are numerous reasons like financial stress, family problems or mental health disorders that lead to suicide. The number one cause of suicide is untreated depression. The issues that were just listed are some social conditions from society that results in a suicidal

For this current event, I chose to read the article titled, Widespread media coverage contributing to rise in mass shootings, say psychologists, by Jess Staufenberg. In this article Jess elaborates on the idea proposed by psychologists that giving mass shooters the fame they desire in the media is contributing to their rise.

In general, the evidence from ecological studies suggests that there is a relationship between nonfictional television portrayal of suicide and actual suicides (Bollen & Phillips, 1982; Phillips & Carstensen, 1986; Phillips & Carstensen, 1988; Stack, 1989, 1990c). Despite some methodological problems and a few null findings (Horton & Stack, 1984; Kessler et al.,1988,1989),itisreasonabletosaythatthese findings demonstrate consistency. The association clearly demonstrates strength, in that it is most evident up to 10 days after the media stimulus and then dissipates (Bollen & Phillips,1982).Thisfinding also tends to suggest that the association satisfies the condition oftemporality,although it should benotedthat manyother studies fail to demonstrate

Media coverage glorify the killer’s crimes which provides inspiration for others to pursue similar crimes or worst. One may notice that there are several mass shootings that can happen in a span of a few months. As a result, the public finds the same news coverage but with different people. With this continuous series of events. one may find that a wave of “copycat suicides” will occured in their own community. This wave of suicides occurs when someone commits suicides when a suicide is publicized (Herz). Vice president of research for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Jill Harkavy-Friedman, claims that “The more characteristics you make available for modeling, the more likely that modeling will occur” (Herz). Harkavy-Friedman

“Even though her mother had no sense that Riley was having problems, she knew it was important to talk to her daughter about suicide, and so she did. Between 2013 and 2015, 29 kids in their county had killed themselves, many from just a handful of schools, including Riley's. There had been gunshot deaths, hangings and drug overdoses. And then there were those choking deaths the victims' parents insisted were accidental. Riley knew of at least two of the kids who had killed themselves the previous winter: an older girl at school (they had mutual friends) and a boy in her Christian youth group. Such peripheral connections are all that seem to connect most of the kids in the area who had killed themselves, and school and county officials began to worry they were witnessing a copycat effect...until copycat became too weak a word. It was more like an outbreak, a plague spreading through school hallways. About a year after Sjoerdsma and her daughter last spoke about suicide, Riley was staying at her father's house one night when she downed a small bottle of whiskey, then sent out a series of troubling texts and Snapchat messages. "I'm sorry it had to be

Over the past several decades, suicide has been a topic of great concern amongst researchers and psychologists who continue to see a rise in the number of annual suicides. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the United States. However, it is the third leading cause of death among individuals between ages 10-14 and the second leading cause of death among 15-34 year olds (Piscopo 2). Just over the last forty years, suicide rates for all ages have been on a steady incline, which has pushed researchers to investigate possible causes. Particular attention has been paid to the possible influence news and television coverage of suicide may have on the general populous. The theory that media stories can cause a spike of imitative suicides is known as “The Werther Effect,” obtained from the belief that Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774 triggered an increase in the number of suicides, leading to its ban throughout Europe (Gould 1269). Since then, there has been extensive research into the way suicide is portrayed in the news, on television, in plays, music literature and social media. In more recent years, researchers have found a strong relationship between suicide portrayals in newspapers or on television and a subsequent increase in suicide rates (Hawton 1374).

In fact the media leads us to believe that “most of us have come to regard suicide with an element of resignation, even as a particularly brutal form of social Darwinism” (Source A). The media portrays suicide as a form of survival of the fittest, showing us that that there is nothing that we can do to stop this. There are even studies shown in the media that tells despite “new generations of antidepressant drugs...crisis hotline centers [being] established in most every American city... today the nation’s suicide rate (11 victims per 100,000 inhabitants) is almost precisely what it was in 1965” (Source A) The media shows us that despite our efforts for suicide prevention there is little effect. At the same time the media misrepresents the suicides, “attributing the act to single factors such as financial disasters, broken relationships, or failure in examinations. [However] The most common factor leading to suicide, mental illness, is often overlooked” (Source B). The media tends to inform us of the obvious reasons for suicide the cause is much deeper than realized. Because Source A says that the media shows us that suicide is part of social darwinism, and Source B argues that the media misrepresents the cause of the suicide, they both succeed in acknowledging that the media is not reporting on suicides

Rarely mentioned are the much more common homicides, “the killing of poor and obscure people by their friends or relatives during arguments fueled by booze or drugs” (Carlson 1994). Data provided by mediaQuant, covering over 100,000 news sources, found “some mass killers receive more free publicity in advertising value than some of the most famous American celebrities, including Kim Kardashian, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and Jennifer Aniston. And that attention lasts: The 2015 Charleston church shooter received more than $17 million of free media coverage in the two years after his attack, and the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooter received more than $10 million of coverage in the following 10 months… Because of the endless supply of valuable free publicity they receive, mass killers also gain fans and followers. Psychologist Peter Langman has identified 32 attackers who cited the Columbine shooters as role models and eight attackers who considered the Virginia Tech shooter to be a role model” (Lankford 2017). The media, while not the main influence for crime and murder, does not alleviate it. People care about these stories, and it is important that they are covered, but the media should refrain from publishing names and photos of mass killers, unless the search is ongoing or the suspect(s) escaped, and only include details relevant to public