THE EFFECT OF TELEVISION ON NATIONAL SUICIDE RATES.

Research on the effect of the mass media on social behavior has been extended to the problem of suicide. Phillips found that suicides increased significantly after the airing of suicide plots on television soap operas. Earlier work on imitation theories of suicide has been marked by methodological difficulties including the omission of key control variables drawn from prominent alternative paradigms on suicide. Given this model misspecification the results may be spurious. The present research explores the relationship between the number of seconds of coverage of suicide stories on the 6 o'clock national news, an index of suggestion-imitation, and the monthly suicide rate. Control variables are introduced to test for spuriousness and to weight the importance of the independent variables. The measure of suggestability has the advantage that more people watch the 6 o'clock news than watch soap operas, indicating a greater potential for imitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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