Abstract
We investigated the association of the intensity of newspaper reporting of charcoal burning suicide with the incidence of such deaths in Taiwan during 1998–2002. A counting process approach was used to estimate the incidence of suicides and intensity of news reporting. Conditional Poisson generalized linear autoregressive models were performed to assess the association of the intensity of newspaper reporting of charcoal burning and non-charcoal burning suicides with the actual number of charcoal burning and non-charcoal burning suicides the following day. We found that increases in the reporting of charcoal burning suicide were associated with increases in the incidence of charcoal burning suicide on the following day, with each reported charcoal burning news item being associated with a 16% increase in next day charcoal burning suicide (p<.0001). However, the reporting of other methods of suicide was not related to their incidence. We conclude that extensive media reporting of charcoal burning suicides appears to have contributed to the rapid rise in the incidence of the novel method in Taiwan during the initial stage of the suicide epidemic. Regulating media reporting of novel suicide methods may prevent an epidemic spread of such new methods.
Highlights
A rapid increase in suicides by burning barbecue charcoal changed the epidemiology of suicide in Taiwan in the first decade of the 21st century [1,2]
No previous studies have systematically examined the intensity of reporting of this new method when it first appeared in Taiwan and whether the intensity of media reporting was associated with the increasing incidence of suicides by charcoal burning
In the two months selected in 2001, we identified a total of ten news items on charcoal burning suicide in United Daily (UD), seven in China Times (CT) and only one news item in Liberty Times (LT)
Summary
A rapid increase in suicides by burning barbecue charcoal changed the epidemiology of suicide in Taiwan in the first decade of the 21st century [1,2]. The first widely-reported case of charcoal burning suicide occurred in Hong Kong in 1998 where a middle-aged woman was depicted as having a peaceful and painless death by burning barbecue charcoal in a small sealed room [4,6]. It is believed the method was subsequently adopted in Taiwan because the same written language (i.e. traditional Chinese characters) is used in both countries, reports of its use were accessible to the whole population. No previous studies have systematically examined the intensity of reporting of this new method when it first appeared in Taiwan and whether the intensity of media reporting was associated with the increasing incidence of suicides by charcoal burning
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