Premium
Do Written Reports of Suicide Induce High‐School Students to Believe that Suicidal Contagion Will Occur? 1
Author(s) -
McDonald Douglas H.,
Range Lillian M.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1990.tb00392.x
Subject(s) - loneliness , psychology , ucla loneliness scale , suicide prevention , psychiatry , covid-19 , clinical psychology , poison control , social psychology , medical emergency , medicine , disease , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty)
To see if high‐school students who read that a distressed adolescent knew about suicide thought that suicidal contagion would occur, 66 consenting high‐school students read a written account of John, a high‐schooler with multiple problems including knowing someone who had died (either by suicide or viral illness). They then anonymously completed the UCLA Loneliness scale and a questionnaire about what John (or they in the same situation) might do. When John knew of a sympathetic response to a viral illness death, or an unsympathetic response to suicide, he was rated as relatively more likely to make new friends and less likely to want to die. These high school students saw themselves as immune to suicidal contagion from a written report, but thought that others might be vulnerable if people were sympathetic.