title: The Impact of Celebrity Suicide on Subsequent Suicide Rates in the General Population of Korea from 1990 to 2010.
abstract: The association between celebrity suicide and subsequent increase in suicide rates among the general population has been suggested. Previous studies primarily focused on celebrity suicides in the 2000s. To better understand the association, this study examined the impacts of celebrity suicides on subsequent suicide rates using the data of Korean celebrity suicides between 1990 and 2010. Nine celebrity suicides were selected by an investigation of media reports of suicide deaths published in three major newspapers in Korea between 1990 and 2010. Suicide mortality data were obtained from the National Statistical Office of Korea. Seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average models with intervention analysis were used to test the impacts of celebrity suicides, controlling for seasonality. Six of the 9 celebrity suicides had significant impacts on suicide rates both in the total population and in the same gender- or the same age-subgroups. The incident that occurred in the 1990s had no significant impact on the overall suicide rates, whereas the majority of the incidents in the 2000s had significant influences for 30 or 60 days following each incident. The influence of celebrity suicide was shown to reach its peak following the suicide death of a renowned actress in 2008. The findings may suggest a link between media coverage and the impact of celebrity suicide. Future studies should focus more on the underlying processes and confounding factors that may contribute to the impact of celebrity suicide on subsequent suicide rates.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, Korea .
authors.forename: Juhyun
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5549-9756
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Park
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics, Korea University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea .
authors.forename: Nari
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-0550-8810
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, Korea.; Department of Medicine, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
authors.forename: Seog Ju
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-2432-2421
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, Korea .
authors.forename: Soohyun
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-0322-7935
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics, Korea University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea .
authors.forename: Hyonggin
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-0566-758X
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: An
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Korea University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea .
authors.forename: Heon-Jeong
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-9560-2383
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, Korea.; Department of Psychiatry, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
authors.forename: Yu Jin
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-5195-2579
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005197:Famous Persons; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009524:Newspapers as Topic; D056910:Republic of Korea; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Celebrity; Suicide; Werther Effect