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Mustn't forget tidying up the wrist-slitting in 13 Reasons Why.


Nor should we forget the social contagion risk of suicide

> After the series' release, a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found that suicide among teenagers rose by 28.9% in the month after Netflix launched the show.


While 28.9% sounds like a shocking number, it was only a few dozen additional deaths.

A few additional concerns with the paper:

-The authors made no effort to try and determine if any of the people who died had seen the show, or even had heard of it.

-Suicides were up the month before the show was released as well.

-In fact, suicides in that age group had been trending up for years according to their data, which is not mentioned in the discussion of results at all.


Nor should we forget to beware the man of one study.


Who's the "man" in this case? Not me. Not a man, and I see that study as a single data point associated with a single event. There are many studies on the social contagion effect of suicide, enough that it's worth considering the possible impact of how suicide is depicted in media.


The Werther Effect is thoroughly studied effect. There are plenty of studies on the issue.




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