Suicide and Censorship

Definition: Act of deliberately killing oneself

Significance: Because suicide has long been seen as shameful in Western societies, it has been a taboo subject in the arts, and the modern American news media have often censored news of suicides—particularly among the young—partly from fear that publicity may encourage imitators.

During the 1990’s suicide ranked as the ninth leading cause of death in the United States—immediately ahead of homicide. Nevertheless, suicide has been far less visible in the media than murder. It has also occurred much less often than murder in novels, in films, and on television—all of which has contributed to the misleading impression that suicide is less common than murder. Dying of murder is not necessarily shameful, and the rituals that follow it are public; such public acts are intended, in part, to heal the rift that murder creates in society. Suspected murderers are sought, captured, and brought to trial—leading to public discussion of guilt, innocence, and the justifications for their punishments. By contrast, a person who commits suicide is buried or cremated quietly, seldom with a discussion in public over whether the suicide was justified. Suicide has been seen as shameful, something to be hidden from the public. The social damage of suicide is not compensated, in many cases, with public acts that seek to restore order.

News Reports

Suicides become public news when they are committed by famous or public persons, or when their circumstances are unusual. Marilyn Monroe’s suicide, for example, received so much attention that her death was transformed into a cultural tragedy. Mass media textbooks have openly discussed the 1987 suicide of Pennsylvania state treasurer R. Bud Dwyer; he killed himself with a handgun during a live press conference. Suicides that are committed by people who are not famous or that are not committed in striking ways tend to go unreported. Newspaper obituaries and death notices, which rely upon the cooperation of funeral homes and family members, typically omit cause of death in cases of suicide or use vague euphemisms, such as “died at home” or “died suddenly.”

Hiding suicide in the news media has been particularly common when teenagers have killed themselves. Newspaper editors and television news directors worry that reports of teenage suicides will lead to more suicides. They fear what has been called the “Werther effect,” so named after several readers imitated the suicide of a character in The Sorrows of Young Werther, a romantic novel written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1774. The Werther effect seemed to be present in 1987, when television news reports of the suicide of teenagers in Bergenfield, New Jersey, led to copycat suicides. Copycat suicides among the young also occurred in Japan after the production of The Love Suicides at Sonezaki (1703), by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, a popular play about two young lovers who commit suicide.

Suicide Manuals

Despite cultural taboos on discussing suicide publicly, a suicide manual topped the New York Times best-seller list for several weeks in 1991. Written for persons with terminal medical conditions, Derek Humphry’s Final Exit spelled out in clear language and large type how to commit suicide efficiently. The Carol Publishing Group sold 550,000 hardback copies of the book, which also went into a paperback edition. Final Exit found its way into most U.S. libraries and bookstores; however, few outlets displayed the book, and some independent bookstores refused to carry it. Bookstore chains acted differently. Waldenbooks and B. Dalton, for example, which earlier had been severely criticized for responding to threats by refusing to carry Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses (1988), showed that they had learned their lesson by carrying Final Exit.

The sudden availability of hundreds of thousands of copies of Final Exit in bookstores and libraries prompted fears that the number of suicides would rise. Indeed, reports of attempted and successful suicides in which Final Exit may have played a part appeared soon after the book’s publication. In Charleston, South Carolina, for example, a motel cleaner found the body of a healthy thirty-year-old man in his room. He was wearing a crucifix ring and was tattooed with “To Hell with Satan” across his shoulders and “777” on the back of his right hand. His last diary entry was a recipe for a cyanide cocktail copied from Final Exit. He died of cyanide poisoning.

In Oklahoma City, the body of a healthy sixty-one-year-old man asphyxiated by carbon monoxide was discovered in his garage by his elderly mother. He showed that he had followed Final Exit’s advice by doing everything from putting his financial affairs in order and avoiding raising suspicions about when his suicide would occur to making sure that his Mercedes had a full tank of gas and that his garage was well sealed. In his living room next to his will and a note alluding to his suicide as his “final exit” was a copy of Humphry’s Final Exit.

In the light of such alarming reports, several research projects were initiated to determine the effect of Final Exit on the suicide rate. One study compared suicides occurring in New York City during the years before and after Final Exit was published. It not only found a significant rise in the number of suicidal suffocations by plastic bag—a technique recommended in Final Exit—it also noted that few of the persons who had apparently used Final Exit before committing suicide suffered from terminal illnesses. However, the same study also noted that the overall suicide rate did not change. A comparison of national suicide statistics between 1990 and 1991 yielded similar findings. Suffocations by plastic bag and suicidal poisonings did increase significantly, but the total number of suicides did not increase. These studies collectively suggested that Final Exit influenced methods of suicide, not the suicide rate. In other words, the book may have given helpful instructions to suicidal people, but did not itself prompt their suicides. Nevertheless, family members of persons who followed advice in Final Exit to commit suicide called for measures to restrict access to the book.

Final Exit was published with the intent of forcing the issue of euthanasia into public discussion. The Hemlock Society, a euthanasia organization, grew into an organization of thirty thousand members belonging to eighty-four chapters in thirty-nine states; in 2003, the group's name changed to End-of-Life Choices and, two years later, merged with another right-to-die organization to form Compassion & Choices. The fact that Final Exit became a best-seller in a society that seems to be satisfied with the underreporting of suicide suggests that Americans view suicide as an option for elderly persons who are on the brink of their final suffering or mental or physical degeneration but that they reject it as a solution for mental distress.

Suicide in the Digital Age

In the 2000s, the rapidly emerging phenomenon in cyberbullying—harassment, threats, and shaming via social media, e-mail, chat rooms, or text messaging—led to a spate of teen suicides that were widely publicized, in contrast to past coverage of teenage suicides. Online forums and social media platforms have had a mixed record in terms of helping or harming those with suicidal tendencies. Some research indicated that distressed users have found emotional support and positive advice through such outlets, while other studies have revealed that those who engage in self-harm or attempt suicide often learn about methods and gain encouragement for their destructive actions through online media. Many teenagers and young adults post blog entries about their suicidal thoughts and plans.

There have been some efforts to remove such content from the web or limit access to it in order to protect others who may be vulnerable to its influence. In 2013, social media sites Pinterest and Instagram partnered with the National Eating Disorders Association to censor search terms and hashtags that lead to content promoting eating disorders, self-harm behaviors, or suicide. (The hashtag is a word or phrase without spaces prefixed with the hash symbol, #. Users can then search for the hashtag on various networks and find posts concerning the topic.) Pinterest and Instagram also implemented public service announcements (PSAs) to appear when users attempt to access such content. Tumblr, which hosts hundreds of thousands of blogs, has similarly created its own PSAs directing users who are looking for self-harm or suicide content to a "counseling and prevention resources" page. By contrast, the secret-sharing service Whisper allows a user to post unhealthy messages but only visible to that user, and its affiliated nonprofit and hotline information are then provided.

Facebook, where many users have posted suicide notes and even documented their final moments in graphic images, has tailored its search function to display only results related to preventing self-harm and suicide, and its content policy prohibits the sharing of images of self-harm or graphic violence. In 2015, it rolled out an updated suicide-prevention feature that allows a user to flag the post of a friend whom the user believes is expressing suicidal thoughts and that offers tools and resources to both the reporter and the friend in need.

Bibliography

“How Internet Affects Young People At Risk of Self-Harm or Suicide.” University of Oxford. U of Oxford, 31 Oct. 2013. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.

Humphry, Derek. Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying. Eugene: Hemlock Soc., 1991. Print.

Kleinman, Alexis. “Facebook Adds New Feature for Suicide Prevention.” HuffPost Tech. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 2 Mar. 2015. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.

Marzuk, Peter M., Kenneth Tardif, and Andrew C. Leon. “Increase in Fatal Suicidal Poisonings and Suffocations in the Year Final Exit Was Published: A National Study.” American Journal of Psychiatry 151.12 (1994): 1813–14. Print.

Perez, Sarah. “Over a Year after New Content Policies,‘Self-Harm Social Media’ Still Thrives.” TechCrunch. AOL, 20 June 2013. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.

Ziesenis, Elizabeth B. “Suicide Coverage in Newspapers: An Ethical Consideration.” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 6.4 (1991): 234–44. Print.