Fig 1.
Suicide rates, per 100,000 persons, 2018 or latest available.
Note: Suicide rates are defined as the deaths deliberately initiated and performed by a person in the full knowledge or expectation of its fatal outcome. Source: OECD (2020), Suicide rates (indicator). doi: 10.1787/a82f3459-en (Accessed on 06 November 2020).
Table 1.
Summary statistics for daily suicides.
Table 2.
Characteristics of celebrity death incidents: 2005–2018.
Fig 2.
Estimated changes in total suicides before and after media reports on celebrity suicide.
Note: The y-axis indicates an approximate percent change in public suicide by corresponding day, which is the estimated βk in Eq (1). The dotted lines indicate 95% confidence interval.
Table 3.
Incident rate ratio (IRR) on days away from celebrity death incidents.
Fig 3.
Estimated changes in total suicides by age group before and after celebrity suicide media reports.
Note: The y-axis indicates an approximate percent change in public suicide by corresponding day, which is the estimated βk in Eq (1). The dotted lines indicate 95% confidence interval.
Table 4.
Average effect on days after celebrity death incidents.
Fig 4.
Estimated changes in total suicides by gender before and after media reports on celebrity suicide.
Note: The y-axis indicates an approximate percent change in public suicide by corresponding day, which is the estimated βk in Eq (1). The dotted lines indicate 95% confidence interval.
Fig 5.
Estimated changes in total suicides by gender before and after media reports on celebrity suicide.
Note: “Same Gender” refers to celebrity suicides of the same gender, while “Opposite Gender” refers to those of the opposite gender. For example, the effect of female celebrity suicides on the female sample is the blue line denoted as “Same Gender” while the effect of male celebrity suicides on the female sample is the red line denoted as “Opposite Gender.” The y-axis indicates an approximate percent change in public suicide by corresponding day, which is the estimated βk in Eq (1). The dotted lines indicate 95% confidence interval.
Fig 6.
Estimated changes in total suicides by suicidal method before and after media reports on celebrity who committed suicide by hanging.
Note: The y-axis indicates an approximate percent change in public suicide by corresponding day, which is the estimated βk in Eq (1). The dotted lines indicate 95% confidence interval.
Fig 7.
Estimated changes in total suicides before and after media reports on celebrity suicide.
Note: The top panel shows the result before implementing “Suicide Reporting Guideline 2.0” and the bottom panel reports it after the implementation. The y-axis indicates an approximate percent change in public suicide by corresponding day, which is the estimated βk in Eq (1). The dotted lines indicate 95% confidence interval.
Fig 8.
Estimated changes in total suicides before and after celebrity suicide media reports using the number of online news articles.
Note: The top panel shows results using celebrity suicide reports of less than 1200 news articles and the bottom panel reports results using celebrity suicide reports with 1200 or more news articles. The number 1,200 was selected to divide the celebrities into two groups with enough and even sample sizes. There are seven cases of more than 1,200 news reports and six cases of lower than 1,200. The y-axis indicates an approximate percent change in public suicide by corresponding day, which is the estimated βk in Eq (1). The dotted lines indicate 95% confidence interval.
Fig 9.
Estimated changes in total suicides before and after media reports on celebrity who died from accidents or illness, not suicide.
Note: The y-axis indicates an approximate percent change in public suicide by corresponding day, which is the estimated βk in Eq (1). The dotted lines indicate 95% confidence interval.
Fig 10.
Estimated changes in total suicides before and after media reports on celebrity suicide.
Note: The thick blue line is the main result of the top panel of Fig 2 using all 13 celebrity suicides. The light gray lines each represent results from 12 celebrity suicides after omitting each of the 13 celebrity suicides. The y-axis indicates an approximate percent change in public suicide by corresponding day, which is the estimated βk in Eq (1). The dotted lines indicate 95% confidence interval.
Fig 11.
Estimated changes in total suicides using different lags.
Note: We assign lags of 30, 60, and 90 days to the actual dates of celebrity suicides. The y-axis indicates an approximate percent change in public suicide by corresponding day, which is the estimated βk in Eq (1). The dotted lines indicate 95% confidence interval.