Columbia study finds significant suicide contagion after celebrity deaths

NEW YORK, July 31 (UPI) -- A new study explores the swift and far-reaching spread of suicidal behaviors after the suicides of Robin Williams in 2014, and of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain , which occurred within three days of each other in 2018.

The study, undertaken by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City, was published Wednesday in Science Advances.

Researchers created a computer model to examine the dynamics underlying suicide "contagion" -- the concept that deaths in this manner frequently occur in clusters, with the behavior of one or more people influencing others.

They discovered that the 2014 and 2018 events resulted in significant increases in the contagious transmission of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. These findings lay the groundwork for measuring suicidal contagion to better recognize, prevent and curb its spread, they said.

"When suicide is depicted in popular literature or celebrities die by suicide or attempt suicide, it somehow normalizes it for people who identify with those individuals," said Jeffrey Shaman, a co-author of the study and a professor of environmental health sciences at the Mailman School.

"We want to better understand rates of suicide contagion, how it varies among populations and following both local and national suicide events," said Shaman, who also is interim dean of Columbia Climate School and has become known for developing models of influenza and SARS-CoV-2.

Researchers estimated how much celebrities' behaviors are "contagions that make other people act or think in that way," he said, adding that they "would use such findings to better target prevention efforts and mental health services."

The team's model for suicide contagion has a structure similar to those portraying other infectious systems, including the number of people capable of transmitting the contagion and the number of people vulnerable to infection.

No single factor is responsible for suicide or suicidal ideation -- thoughts of wanting to take one's own life, researchers said.

However, experts have long attributed part of suicidal ideation to social, or contagious, processes. Being close to or familiar with individuals who have imagined, attempted suicide or succumbed to it can prompt suicidal ideation or attempts among susceptible individuals, they say.

Rates of suicide increased about 36% between 2000 and 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There were 48,183 deaths from suicide in 2021 -- about one every 11 minutes. The number of people who think about or attempt suicide is even higher, the CDC reported .

In this study, the researchers' suicide contagion model uses two data sources. Total weekly calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, now known as the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, served as an estimate of suicidal ideation. Mortality data came from the National Vital Statistics System, managed by the National Center for Health Statistics.

This model estimated that a pronounced surge in suicide contagion rates existed, including a thousand-fold increase in the likelihood that a person would have begun to ideate suicide after news of Williams' death by suicide in 2014.

The magnitude of the suicide contagion rate changes after news of Spade and Bourdain's suicides in 2018 was roughly half.

Among the two celebrity suicide events -- because Spade and Bourdain died three days apart, researchers treated their deaths as a single event -- the number of excess suicide deaths was about double after Williams' death.

This possibly reflected variations in communication and media attention after each event and the level of population connection with the deceased, researchers said.

In the 2014 and 2018 simulations, they noted that the elevated rates of suicide contagion lasted about two weeks before returning to baseline levels.

Eventually, with additional research, the model could provide real-time estimations of suicide contagion and risk. This would require real-time availability of information about calls and deaths from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and the National Vital Statistics System.

The National Institute of Mental Health funded the study.

This study is "a novel example of how national surveillance data can be used to quantify contagion and estimate the period of increased population risk after high-profile suicides," said Holly Wilcox, a professor and suicide prevention researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

Wilcox, who was not involved in the study, suggested refining this research to identify population subgroups that need support and enhanced outreach after celebrity suicides.

"Aspects of media coverage about celebrity suicide can amplify or diminish suicidal response behaviors and can be especially detrimental to a vulnerable subgroup of the population as manifested through increases in calling suicide hotlines and suicide death," she said.

Dr. Casey Berson, medical director of Prisma Health's Center for Psychiatry in Greer, S.C., said she is pleased the researchers aim to use the study's results to promote meaningful change to help prevent suicide.

It's important to "convey that suicide is complex and caused by a range of factors," said Berson, a child and adolescent psychiatrist. She added that while connecting viewers to resources, the media and entertainment industry can show that help is available.

She also recommended using nonjudgmental language and avoiding details about suicide methods.

Social media also can help people interact in ways that may support suicide prevention," said Dr. Alan Teo, a psychiatrist and mental health services researcher who is a professor at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.

Teo also noted that "some of the techniques applied to the study of contagion of infectious diseases like COVID may be directly applicable to understanding how suicide 'spreads' in a similar way,"

However, "we really don't know if the model developed is an accurate predictor of future suicides. We need to know if the model works outside of limited context of what was examined in the study, which after all is really what predictive analytics is all about."

If you or someone you know is suicidal, call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline .