Suicide: A Contagious Culture

By Jenny Nolan, Department of Medical Ethics

The bright innocence of youth is disappearing beneath a dark wave of teen suicides on the island of Guam.

Early this year a 12-year-old boy hanged himself with his football shoelaces after an argument with his mother. An 18-year- old student, suffering over a breakup with his girlfriend, hanged himself from a pipe in his shower. A 14-year-old girl filled notebooks with thoughts and plans for suicide months before she actually killed herself. Twenty-two teens and preteens have acted on those vows and killed themselves in the last 26 months.

Grown-ups are reeling. What can explain such a deadly epidemic?

The vortex of the epidemic is a secretive club called " Prestigious Angels," and similar groups like it. Part of the deadly allure of these "friendship pacts" is that members promise to kill themselves if their friends will follow.

According to the March 22 Washington Post, Guam police and social workers say the teenagers are using the Internet and e- mail to form suicide pacts. How widespread is sympathy for such behavior? When eighth-grade teacher Dana Taitano asked her class how many of them found the idea of suicide attractive, all but one student raised his hand.

On an island of only 154,000 people, these deaths are family affairs with a wide-ranging ripple effect. According to the Post, the native Chamorro have large extended families "and consider even unrelated neighbors to be 'aunts' and uncles.' "

"It's a crisis," said Lilli Perez Iyechad, a social worker. "It's almost like we are numb, in a state of shock."

But it doesn't require modern communication technology to set off a tragic wave of suicides. Suicide epidemics are nothing new.

They appear in history as early as the fifth century B.C., when the apparent suicide of the great statesman Themistocles triggered a noticeable increase in suicides in ancient Athens.

More recently, in 1990, Ricardo Bordallo, a former governor of Guam, wrapped himself in a national flag, chained himself to a statue, and shot himself. Guam attorney Patrick Wolff commented to the Post, "There is a tendency to glorify suicide as somehow brave and warrior-like."

But can it be said that suicides can be contagious? Scholarly work strongly suggests the answer is yes.

Suicide can act as a magnet, drawing those in like situations to consider it an option for resolving conflict and gaining recognition. A Duquesne Law Review article, "Suicide: A Constitutional Right?" explores the contagious effects of suicide on the larger population.

The authors write that much of the attractiveness of committing suicide comes from the attention and sanction of society. Even in cases of official disapproval and prevention attempts, the public attention amounts to a glorification of self-destruction. By the power of example, suicide can generate more suicides.

Similarly, society's acceptance of a publicized suicide can lead other troubled people to perceive an expectation that they will also kill themselves. In the article, psychiatrist Dr. Herbert Hendin, who now leads the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, states, "Evidence relating to the contagious or suggestive effects of suicide...on the emotionally vulnerable, is accumulating. In a metropolis one can note an accumulation of suicide cases in specific blocks and housing developments, especially in those where through lack of privacy, personal melancholy is easily transferred.... Every suicide can start a chain of suicides."

Suicide is not restricted to any one group of people or type of problem. Once it appears on the scene as an option in a particular circumstance, it functions like a siren song, calling others with similar experiences to follow the example of the first. So it is with the children of Guam.

In the United States, the implications of this could be grave indeed. Citizens in Oregon voted to legalize assisted suicide as an "alternative" for the terminally ill in 1994. Reflective of increasing public acceptance, the number of people succumbing to the lure of suicide is growing. And the reasons they cite are very disturbing.

According to the latest report recently released by the Oregon Health Division, the percentage of people who seek suicide due to fears about burdening loved ones is climbing sharply. In 1998 these concerns accounted for only 12% of the suicides. By the following year the figure rose to 26%, and in 2000 it soared to 63%.

Pro-lifers fear that it is precisely the societal acceptance of suicide that is drawing vulnerable people to choose it instead of seeking help. The growing number of people who kill themselves in order to spare others the weight of their care is a stark indicator that some people are receiving - - and acting on - - the message that past a certain point, their lives are not worth the trouble.

Where suicide has the sanction of the state and the cooperation of society, what is to stop other elderly and infirm Oregonians from concluding that they have no place left in this world? That they, too, would be regarded as tragic, but perhaps noble figures sacrificing themselves for our common good?

Said Burke Balch, director of NRLC's Department of Medical Ethics, "When suicide is accepted as a cure, the invisible barrier, the protection of the state, is ripped away. The vulnerable, whether teens in turmoil, the terminally ill, or those with disabilities are 'empowered' by the indifference of others to end their lives."