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This page considers writing about cybersuicide and suicide.
It covers -
introductions
Useful points of entry to the medical and sociological literature
are The International Handbook of Suicide and Attempted
Suicide (New York: Wiley 2004) edited by Keith Hawton
& Kees van Heeringen and Suicide: The Hidden Side
of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity 2008) by Christian Baudelot
& Roger Establet. Riaz Hassan's Suicide explained:
the Australian experience (Carlton: Melbourne Uni Press
1995) is of particular value for Australasia. It is complemented
by An Australian-Japanese Perspective on Suicide Prevention:
Culture. Community & Care (November 2004 Symposium Papers)
(Canberra: Dept of Health & Ageing 2006) edited by
Diego de Leo, Hele Herrman, Shigeru Ueda & Tadash Takeshima.
For literary and historical perspectives six works are Anthony
Alvarez' The Savage God (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1970),
Georges Minois' History of Suicide: Voluntary Death in
Western Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni Press 2001),
Leaving You: The Cultural Meaning of Suicide (Chicago:
Dee 2003) by Lisa Lieberman, Suicide in the Middle Ages
(Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1999, 2001) by Alexander Murray,
Barbara Gates' Victorian Suicide: Mad Crimes & Sad
Histories (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 1988) and Suicide
& Euthanasia: Historical and Contemporary Themes
(Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers 1989) edited by Baruch
Brody.
Jeffrey Watt's Suicide in Early Modern Europe page
and Ron Brown's The Art of Suicide (London: Reaktion
2001), complement From Sin to Insanity: Suicide in Early
Modern Europe (Ithaca: Cornell Uni Press 2004), highlighting
philosophical, literary and artistic resources.
Emile Durkheim's 1897 Suicide remains of interest
for insights and its status as a foundation text in sociology.
cultures
Maurice Pinguet's Voluntary Death in Japan (Oxford:
Polity 1993) and Mamoru Iga's The Thorn in the Chrysanthemum:
Suicide and Economic Success in Modern Japan (Berkeley:
Uni of California Press 1986) explore the 'Japanese invention'.
The 'Cuban Disease' is discussed in To Die In Cuba: Suicide
and Society (Chapel Hill: Uni of North Carolina Press
2006) by Louis Perez; other perspectives are provided in Irina
Paperno's Suicide as a Cultural Institution in Dostoevsky's
Russia (Ithaca: Cornell Uni Press 1997) and Jeffrey Watt's
Choosing Death: Suicide and Calvinism in Early Modern
Geneva (Kirksville: Truman State Uni Press 2001).
For the US see Herbert Hendin's Suicide in America
(New York: Norton 1995) and Thomas Joiner's Why People
Die by Suicide (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 2006). Alice
James commented in 1889 that
It's
bad that it is so untidy, there is no denying that, for
one bespatters one's friends morally as well as physically,
taking them so much more into one's secret than they want
to be taken. But how heroic to be able to suppress one's
vanity to the extent of confessing that the game is too
hard.
philosophies
Philosophical discussion includes Jean Amery's On Suicide:
A Discourse on Voluntary Death (Bloomington: Indiana
Uni Press 1999), Margaret Battin's Ethical Issues in Suicide
(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall 1995) and Zilla Cahn's Suicide
in French Thought from Montesquieu to Cioran (New York:
Peter Lang 1999).
Major works include Hume's
landmark essays on Suicide and the Immortality
of the Soul, Seneca's On Taking Ones Own Life
(Letter
77), Arthur Schopenhauer's
On Suicide, Cesare Pavese's superb Il mestiere
di vivere, Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther,
Albert Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
(New York: Vintage 1991).
Cyber-memorials (aka 'virtual cemeteries) and the control
of blogs, personal sites and other content after the author's
death are discussed here.
law
Georges Minois characterised
suicide as
an
affront to all political and religious systems. Anyone who
chooses death and its unknowns displays a total lack of
confidence in the theories, ideologies, beliefs, plans,
and promises of all leaders ... Even the most liberal system
is reluctant to permit suicide and tolerate free expression
where suicide is concerned.
Insights
regarding the Australian regime are offered in 'Suicide and
the Law' by John Barry in 5(1) Melbourne University Law
Review (1965), chapter 5 (PDF)
of the Model Criminal Code Officers Committee 1998 report
for the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General (SCAG) and
the 2005 report
by the Senate Legal & Constitutional Affairs Committee
on Provisions of the Criminal Code Amendment (Suicide
Related Material Offences) Bill 2005. Context is provided
by Simon Bronitt & Bernadette McSherry's Principles
of Criminal Law (Pyrmont: LBC 2005).
For overseas perspectives see Suicide And the Law: Cases,
Theories And Strategies for Prevention (Buffalo: William
Hein 2005) by James Selkin, Margaret Otlowski's Voluntary
Euthanasia and the Common Law (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press
2000), Glanville Williams' The Sanctity of Life and the
Criminal Law (London: Faber 1958) and Death, Dying
and the Law (Aldershot: Dartmouth 1996) edited by Sheila
McLean.
media and emulation
The Suicide and the Media: A Critical Review (PDF)
by Warwick Blood & Jane Pirkis offers a cogent study of
research into media portrayals of suicide, noting a link between
reporting and suicide. Harry Ganzeboom's 1997 bibliography
highlights the impact of film, television and other mass media.
'Artists' Suicides as a Public Good' by Samuel Cameron, Bijou
Yang & David Lester in 9(4) Archives of Suicide Research
(2005) 389-396 suggests that "The perspective on suicide
from the discipline of economics has to lead us to the position
that suicide may be a good thing."
any
individual artist/celebrity suicide may be of net benefit
to society. Sales of the artist's products and associated
merchandise may increase after the suicide, and people,
including those who were not even born at the time of the
suicide, may derive value from its iconic reification, not
to mention the higher value they derive from some private
goods
For
'suicide by cop' see 'Suicide by cop' by Hutson, Anglin, Yarbrough,
Hardaway et al in 32(6) Annals of Emergency Medicine
(1998) 665-669.
online exits
Among the thin literature about cybersuicide we recommend
1997 'Cybersuicide: The Role of Interactive Suicide
Notes on the Internet' by Pierre Baume, Christopher Cantor,
Andrew Rolfe (in Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention
& Sucide Prevention) (1997), 'Legal Bans on Pro-Suicide
Web Sites: An Early Retrospective From Australia' by Jane
Pirkis, Luke Neal, Andrew Dare, Warwick Blood & David
Studdert in 39(2) Suicide & Life Threatening Behaviour
(2009) 190-193 and the 2001 Suizidforen im Internet
(PDF)
by Georg Fiedler & Reinhard Lindner, available in translation
here.
Otherer works include 'Cybersuicide: Review On the Role of
the Internet on Suicide' by Alao Ao et al in 9 Cyberpsychology
& Behavior (2006) 489-493, 'Cybersuicide or Werther-Effect
Online: Suicide Chatrooms or Forums in the World Wide Web'
by Katja Becker, El-Faddagh & Martin Schmidt in 13(1)
Kindheit und Entwicklung (2004) 14, 'Internet Suicide
in Japan: Implications for Child and Adolescent Mental Health'
by Ayumi Naito in 12(4) Clinical Child Psychology and
Psychiatry (2007) 583-597 and 'Parasuicide Online: Can
Suicide Websites Trigger Suicidal Behaviour in Predisposed
Adolescents?' by Katja Becker al in 58(2) Nordic Journal
of Psychiatry (2004) 111-114. A 2001 RCP Psychiatric
Bulletin item
by Vibhore Prasad & David Owenson explores Using the
internet as a source of self-help for people who self-harm.
Discussions of practicalities feature in works such as Suicide
& Attempted Suicide: Methods and Consequences (New
York: Carroll & Graf 1999) by George Stone and Final
Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted
Suicide for the Dying (New York: Bantam 1998) by Derek
Humphry.
Some of the academic writing strikes us as distinctly underwhelming.
Vinod Scaria's 2003 article
Taking Life on the Web: A case report on three websites
submitted to the E-HARD providing suicide related information
does not move much beyond a very terse description of a mere
three sites and the comment that
To
quantify the menace of such information on the Internet,
we searched the popular search engine Google with the query
string "how to suicide" and returned with 153
URLs, and the websites described above seemed to have good
visibility as per the rank order. Though the number of such
websites seem to be low, the actual incidence of people
using these websites and the influence of these websites
is not known.
Quite.
The 2002 article
by Sotiris Athanaselis, Maria Stefanidou, Nikos Karakoukis
and Antonis Koutselinis on Asphyxial Death by Ether Inhalation
and Plastic-bag Suffocation Instructed by the Press and the
Internet reports in nine brief paragraphs on suicide
involving plastic bag suffocation and diethyl ether inhalation.
The
remarkable point of this case is that the victim followed
instructions from the Internet as well as from a respected
international financial magazine.
The
authors warn that
The
misuse of the Internet - and sometimes of the press, scientific
or not - by people that commit suicide must be emphasized.
Preventive measures concerning the spread of this kind of
information, at a worldwide level, should be taken.
The
nature of those preventive measures - perhaps a ban on the
Economist (the magazine identified in the case) or
merely the prohibition of plastic bags - is not made clear.
fake suicides
Work on fake suicides is highlighted here.
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