In this paper we demonstrate that U.S. daily suicides increase significantly after highly publicized suicide stories appear on television evening news programs.
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the effect probably does not extend beyond ten days.
This here is not an emotionally hyper-laden evening news program. This group of readers is very self-selected. The level of discussion around this topic is far better and, at the very least on the surface, emotionally disconnected than nearly all discussions IRL. (edit: Not that these are implicated as the causes in the abstract, but I think it illustrates where the idea comes from).
And then there is some wrong-headed fatalism: if even this type of discussion screws us, we should give up already. It will be impossible to improve matters if mentioning problems always makes them worse.
Why?
From the abstract:
This here is not an emotionally hyper-laden evening news program. This group of readers is very self-selected. The level of discussion around this topic is far better and, at the very least on the surface, emotionally disconnected than nearly all discussions IRL. (edit: Not that these are implicated as the causes in the abstract, but I think it illustrates where the idea comes from).
And then there is some wrong-headed fatalism: if even this type of discussion screws us, we should give up already. It will be impossible to improve matters if mentioning problems always makes them worse.