Imagine yourself sitting at your computer, reading the news as you normally would on a Monday night.  As you pass the sports section, your eyes graze across a headline that states that your idol has committed suicide.  How would you react?  You would undoubtedly feel sadness and possibly, anger.  Despite the negative feelings, however, you would not likely in turn experience suicidal feelings of your own.

The social phenomenon of suicide is hard to explain.  Throughout history, sociologists such as Émile Durkheim have attempted to decipher the mystery of suicide.  Countless social factors have been noted to cause one to commit suicide, including depression, guilt, anxiety, drug dependency, and financial difficulties.  Suicide controversy continues to plague the nation, with the recent controversy of euthanasia, or medically assisted suicide, causing proponents of both sides to argue about one’s right to decide the outcome of their own life.

Copycat suicide, then, is the duplication of another suicide that the person attempting suicide knows of.  For example, a teen may commit copycat suicide in response to his or her favorite celebrity’s own suicide.  Copycat suicide has two forms, “point clusters” and “mass clusters.”  Point cluster copycat suicide occurs when individuals imitate the suicide of those in their local community or social grouping.  Mass clusters, then, are suicides that occur around the same time in response to reports of celebrity suicides.

Alex Mesoudi of Queen Mary University in London has created a computer model simulation that attempts to study how these copycat suicides occur.  In this computer generated model, Mesoudi created a model community of 1000 people who were divided into 100 groups of 10.  Each of these groups represented one type of social group.  The simulation was balanced using suicide statistics, social networking norms, and other factors.  The study found that people were more likely to commit suicide in groups, or clusters, attributed to the grouping of like people and the learning of suicidal aspects, matching the phenomenon of copycat suicide.  It also found that the media played a significant part in copycat suicide, whether as a preventive or causal factor.

Copycat suicides continue to be a mysterious topic among sociologists, who continue to search for its determining factors.  One thing that we now know for sure is that dramatic and extensive coverage of celebrity suicides contributes to the number of copycat suicide cases.  Numerous celebrity suicides have been noted as the cause of higher suicide rates, no doubt a representation of copycat suicides.  Here are a few cases of celebrity suicides that may have caused an increase in copycat suicides:

1. Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was one of the most famous female celebrities of all time.  Her sleeping pill overdose in 1962 caused a 12% increase in copycat suicides within the next month.

2. Kurt Cobain

Kurt Cobain was the lead singer and principle songwriter of the band Nirvana.  There is considerable controversy surrounding the cause of his death in 1994, but the reported cases of copycat suicides caused the media to pull back from coverage.

3. Hideto Matsumoto

Better known as “hide”, Matsumoto was found hanging by a towel in his apartment in 1998.  There were 3 reported cases of copycat suicide, in addition to 250+ injuries occuring at his funeral.