Youth suicide spreads further than previously thought

Suicide has long been thought to be contagious among youth and now a new study reveals who is affected and for how long. Those who have heard about a suicide at school are more likely to think about or try suicide themselves even if they were not close to the person who died. And the effect persisted two years later.

“We were very surprised by these results,” said Prof. Ian Colman, Canada Research Chair in mental health epidemiology at the University of Ottawa and lead author of the study.

By the time they were 16 or 17 one in four of the adolescents surveyed reported that someone had their school had died by their own hand. “That seems really, really high,” said Colman. “But if you consider that it just takes one child to die of suicide and if that child is attending a school with a thousand students, then a thousand students have been exposed to a suicidal death.”

How strong the effect was really surprised the team. 12 and 13-year-olds who reported a suicide in their school were five times more likely to be thinking about suicide themselves or to try it compared to students of the same age who hadn’t reported a suicide. Among 14 and 15-year-olds it was three time higher. Among 16 and 17-year-old it was twice as high.

Also surprising was that “the suicide contagion effect that we saw was equally strong whether the person who died was personally know to the person reporting or it was just somebody at their school who they didn’t personally know,” said Colman.

Schools having to intervene after a suicide need to cast their nets wider and address the whole school population not just those who were close the student who died, concludes Colman. They should have longer term interventions he suggests, since the research indicates that students continue to think about and commit suicide years after having heard about a case at school.

The study was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.