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studies
This page considers writing about cybersuicide and suicide.
It covers -
introductions
A useful point of entry to the medical literature is The
International Handbook of Suicide and Attempted Suicide
(New York: Wiley 2004) edited by Keith Hawton & Kees van
Heeringen. Riaz Hassan's Suicide explained: the Australian
experience (Carlton: Melbourne Uni Press 1995) is of
particular value for Australasia.
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,
complementing From Sin to Insanity: Suicide in Early Modern
Europe (Ithaca: Cornell Uni Press 2004), highlights philosophical
and literary 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. 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).
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)
are discussed here.
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.
online exits
Among the thin literature about cybersuicide we recommend
the 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) and the 2001 Suizidforen
im Internet (PDF)
by Georg Fiedler & Reinhard Lindner, available in translation
here.
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
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.
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