Is The Internet Pro-Suicide?

According to an article published in BMJ, peopleresearching suicidal methods on the Internet are more likely to findsites that promote suicide instead of ones that provide help andsupport.

It is known that suicidal behavior is influenced by the way the mediacovers suicides and how television and film approach the topic. Thesemedia have even been shown to impact the choice of suicidal methodused. However, there is little research on how the Internet influencesthis type of behavior.

Recently, the popular press has reported on the availability andinfluence of Internet sites and web forums that encourage suicide inyoung people. The research literature, however, is missing a systematicreview on how easy it is to find these types of site on the Internetand exactly what information is offered on them.

This led researchers from the Universities of Bristol, Oxford andManchester to further study suicide on the Internet. The teamapproached the topic by simulating a typical search on Google, Yahoo,MSN, and ASK, that a typical person would perform while seekinginformation on suicidal methods and instructions for suicide. They used12 simple search terms:

1. suicide
2. suicide methods
3. suicide sure methods
4. most effective methods of suicide
5. methods of suicide
6. ways to commit suicide
7. how to commit suicide
8. how to kill yourself
9. easy suicide methods
10. best suicide methods
11. pain-free suicide
12. quick suicide

A total of 480 web addresses (the first ten from each search) and 240unique sites were retrieved, visited, and viewed. A little less thanhalf of the 240 sites contained information on suicidal methods. About20% (90 of 240) were sites whose primary focus was suicide;the researchers coded half of these as encouraging, promoting, orfacilitating suicide.

Contrastingly, 13% (62 of 480) of sites focused on suicideprevention or offered support, and 12% (59 of 480) sites forbade ordiscouraged suicide.

Of sites that were dedicated to suicide and sites with factualinformation, almost all offeredinformation about suicidal methods. The researchers noted that about21% of support and prevention sites, 55% of academic or policy sites,and all news reports contained information on methods of suicide.

Another interesting finding was that Google and Yahoo returned the mostsites dedicated to suicide, while MSN retrieved the highest number ofsites focusing on prevention, support, academics, and policy.The three sites that occurred most frequently in the search promotedsuicide, and Wikipedia’s informational article on suicide was fourth.These top four sites all contained detailed information on suicidalmethodology, specifically addressing method speed, certainty, andpotential amount of pain.

In the UK, suicide sites are legal and there is no regulation. Parentsuse filtering software to block access to these sites and some internetprovides self-regulate in an attempt to reduce any harm that may comefrom accessing pro-suicide site. The authors note, however, that tryingto remove some of the mostdetailed technical descriptions of methods is virtually impossible.

“It may be more fruitful for service providers to pursue websiteoptimisation strategies to maximise the likelihood that suicidal peopleaccess helpful rather than potentially harmful sites in times ofcrisis,” conclude the authors.

Suicide and the Internet
Lucy Biddle, Jenny Donovan, Keith Hawton, Navneet Kapur, David Gunnell
BMJ. Volume 336: p. 880. (12 April 2008).
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Written by: Peter M Crosta
Copyright: Medical News Today