The New England Journal of Medicine reports that both studies suggest that some teenagers might be more likely to take their own lives after seeing TV programs dealing with suicide. NPR's Lorie Garrett reports. The first suicide study, done by a team from the University of California in San Diego, examines television news coverage of suicides. David Philips and Lundy Carseson looked at forty-five suicide stories carried on network news-casts between 1973 and '79. The researchers then compared the incidence of teen suicides in those years to the dates of broadcast of these stories. David Philips says news coverage of suicides definitely prompted an increase in the number of teens in America who took their lives. "The more TV programs that carry a story, the greater they increase in teen suicides just afterwards." The suicide increase among teens was compared by Philips to adult suicide trends. "The teen suicides go up by about 2.91 teen suicides per story. And adult suicides go up by, I think, around two adult suicides per story. The increase for teens, the percentage increase for teens is very, very much larger than the percentage increase for adults. It's about, I think, fourteen or fifteen times as big a response for teens percentagewise as it is for adults." The TV news coverage appears to have prompted a greater increase than is seen around other well-known periods of adolescent depression, such as holidays, personal birthdays, the start of school and winter. Philips could not find any specific types of stories that seem to trigger a greater response among depressed teens. Philips says it seems to simply be the word "suicide" and the knowledge that somebody actively executed the act that pushes buttons in depressed teenagers. Psychiatrists call this "imitative behavior." "What my study showed was that there seems to be imitation not only of relatively bland behavior like dress, dressing or hairstyles, but there seems to be imitation of really quite deviant behavior as well. The teenagers imitate apparently across the board, not just suicides, but everything else as well. " In a separate study, Madeline Gould and David Shaeffer of Columbia University found that made-for-television movies about suicide also stimulated imitative behavior. Even though the movies were intended to portray the problem of teen suicide and offered, in some cases, suicide hot line numbers and advice on counselling, the team believes the four network movies prompted eighty teen suicides. One of the made-for-TV movies examined by the Columbia University team was a CBS production. George Schweitzer, a CBS's Vice President, is well aware of this research. He says, "It is terribly unfortunate that any teens took their lives after the broadcast, but if they had it to do over," says Schweitzer, "CBS would still run the movie." "Studies like these do not measure the most, what we think is the most important thing, which I don't think can be measured, and that is the hundreds and hundreds and probably thousands of teenagers who were positively moved by these kinds of broadcasts." Moved to call suicide hot lines, moved to seek counseling, and moved to discuss their depressions with family members. Schweitzer does not dispute today's studies: some teens may moved to suicide. "But ignoring the issue for fear of that, I think, would be far more disastrous than addressing important social issues to help create awareness and again to have a positive effect." But researcher David Philips suggests the media could decrease the teen suicide problem by avoiding some suicide stories all together and changing the way the others are covered.
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