Is Teen Suicide Contagious?

(Nov. 3) -- Over the past six months, four students at Henry M. Gunn High School in Palo Alto, Calif., have committed suicide in the same location, using the same method: stepping in front of an oncoming commuter train.

A fifth student was pulled from the tracks by his mother and a bystander moments before a train passed.

Suicide "clusters," as experts call them, account for anywhere between 3 percent and 5 percent of all suicide deaths each year, but are almost entirely found among teens and young adults.



"Adolescence is a period of great transition," says Dr. Madelyn Gould, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University who has written extensively on suicide clusters. "Peers become more important than parents. Imitating behavior is a big part of adolescence."

Suicide is the third leading cause of death among U.S. teenagers. Global suicide rates have jumped by 60 percent over the last 45 years. Correspondingly, so have the numbers of suicide clusters, Gould says.

"We don't know why we're seeing suicide rates so far beyond those of the '50s and '60s," says Gould. "There are theories, but we're not sure."

Over the past few decades, suicide clusters have popped up in places like Westchester County, N.Y.; Plano, Texas; Bergenfield, N.J.; and Omaha, Neb., where, in 1986, three students at Bryan High School took their own lives within five days of one another. Another four from the same town tried to follow suit, but failed.

Lanny Berman, executive director of the American Association of Suicidology, was conducting a study to assess the risk of suicide on train lines when he learned of the latest Palo Alto rail suicide. Berman points out that, relatively speaking, few teens commit suicide on train tracks. But, as with all suicide clusters, he sees the role of the media in reporting teen suicide as potentially pivotal.

"When there's lots of publicity through the media, you sometimes see copycat behavior," Berman says. "Vulnerable kids will imitate behavior. It's a very thin line to walk: how to increase awareness without adding to the problem."

But in the age of sites like Facebook and Twitter, in which news of suicides can spread quickly throughout a community and across the country, monitoring the response to tragedy is not always easy.

"Social networking sites make it more challenging for those who are doing suicide prevention. But they also offer opportunities," Gould says.

In the wake of the most recent Palo Alto suicide, for instance, students at Gunn High School started a blog called HMGGMH, which stands for Henry M. Gunn Gives Me Hope. They also started a peer counseling group known as ROCK which stands for "Reach Out. Care. Know," that encourages students to interact with one another about the events of the past six months. Perhaps more importantly, in both forums, classmates of the kids who committed suicide can begin to focus on the future.

Both Berman and Gould say it is important to demystify teen suicide and note that it occurs as a result of underlying mental health issues. Sensationalizing suicide, whether done by the media or on a Facebook page, can offer other troubled individuals what seems like a solution to their own problems.

"It's not rational," Gould says. "These kids develop a kind of tunnel vision. They start to believe that there's no other way out of their problems."