Suicide Mortality in Canada after the Death of Robin Williams, in the Context of High-Fidelity to Suicide Reporting Guidelines in the Canadian Media.

Suicide Mortality in Canada after the Death of Robin Williams, in the Context of High-Fidelity to Suicide Reporting Guidelines in the Canadian Media. Can J Psychiatry. 2019 Jun 10;:706743719854073 Authors: Whitley R, Fink DS, Santaella-Tenorio J, Keyes KM Abstract BACKGROUND: Evidence suggests that suicide mortality increases after high-profile suicide deaths. Indeed, suicide in the United States increased disproportionately after the suicide by suffocation of well-known comedian Robin Williams in August 2014. Such increases are often attributed to irresponsible media coverage of the suicide contributing to "copycat suicides." However, recent research indicates that the mainstream Canadian media have significantly improved their suicide coverage, with high fidelity to suicide reporting guidelines after Williams' death. As such, the aim of the present study is to examine suicide mortality in Canada after Robin Williams' suicide. METHODS: We obtained deidentified monthly suicide count data from January 1999 to December 2015 stratified by age, sex, and method of suicide from Statistics Canada. We used time-series analyses to estimate the expected number of suicides in the months following Robin Williams' death. This was done using a seasonal autoregressive integrated moving averages (SARIMA) method. Expected suicides were then compared with observed suicides. RESULTS: August 2014 was the month with the highest number of ...
Source: Canadian Journal of Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Can J Psychiatry Source Type: research