A copycat suicide is defined as an emulation of another suicide that the person attempting suicide knows about either from local knowledge or due to accounts or depictions of the original suicide on television and in other media. The publicized suicide serves as a trigger, in the absence of protective factors, for the next suicide by a susceptible or suggestible person. This is referred to as suicide contagion.
The Sorrows of Young Werther, or simply Werther, is a 1774 epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, which appeared as a revised edition in 1787. It was one of the main novels in the Sturm und Drang period in German literature, and influenced the later Romantic movement. Goethe, aged 24 at the time, finished Werther in five and a half weeks of intensive writing in January to March 1774. It instantly placed him among the foremost international literary celebrities and was among the best known of his works. The novel is made up of biographical and auto-biographical facts in relation to two triangular relationships and one individual: Goethe, Christian Kestner, and Charlotte Buff ; Goethe, Peter Anton Brentano, Maximiliane von La Roche, and Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem, who died by suicide on the night of Oct 29 or 30, 1772. He shot himself in the head with a pistol borrowed from Kestner. The novel was adapted as the opera Werther by Jules Massenet in 1892.
The Lipovans or Lippovans are ethnic Russian Old Believers living in Romania, Ukraine, Moldova and Bulgaria who settled in the Principality of Moldavia, in the east of the Principality of Wallachia (Muntenia), and in the regions of Dobruja and Budjak during the 17th and 18th centuries. According to the 2011 Romanian census, there are a total of 23,487 Lipovans in Romania, mostly living in Northern Dobruja, in the Tulcea County but also in the Constanța County, and in the cities of Iași, Brăila and Bucharest. In Bulgaria, they inhabit two villages: Kazashko and Tataritsa.
Social proof is a psychological and social phenomenon wherein people copy the actions of others in choosing how to behave in a given situation. The term was coined by Robert Cialdini in his 1984 book Influence: Science and Practice.
Loren Coleman is an American cryptozoologist, author and television personality who has written over 40 books on a number of topics, including cryptozoology. He is also the President, Founder and leading Director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine. He has a background in social work and has also written on the topic of suicide, particularly the copycat effect.
Self-immolation is the act of setting oneself on fire. It is mostly done for political or religious reasons, often as a form of protest or in acts of martyrdom. Due to its disturbing and violent nature, it is considered one of the most extreme methods of protest.
Romas Kalanta was a 19-year-old Lithuanian high school student who killed himself by self-immolation in an act of protest against the Soviet regime in Lithuania. His death provoked the largest post-war riots in Lithuania and inspired similar self-immolations. In 1972, 13 more people committed suicide by self-immolation.
Mass suicide is a form of suicide, occurring when a group of people simultaneously kill themselves. Mass suicide sometimes occurs in religious settings. In war, defeated groups may resort to mass suicide rather than being captured. Suicide pacts are a form of mass suicide that are sometimes planned or carried out by small groups of depressed or hopeless people. Mass suicides have been used as a form of political protest.
A doomsday cult is a cult that believes in apocalypticism and millenarianism, including both those that predict disaster and those that attempt to destroy the entire universe. Sociologist John Lofland coined the term doomsday cult in his 1966 study of a group of members belonging to the Unification Church of the United States: Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith. In 1958, Leon Festinger published a study of a group with cataclysmic predictions: When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World.
Clear Lake High School is a public secondary school located in Houston, Texas, United States.
A copycat crime is a criminal act that is modeled after or inspired by a previous crime. It notably occurs after exposure to media content depicting said crimes, and/or a live criminal model.
A conspiracy of silence, or culture of silence, describes the behavior of a group of people that by unspoken consensus does not mention, discuss, or acknowledge a given subject. The practice may be motivated by positive interest in group solidarity or by negative impulses such as fear of political repercussion or social ostracism. Unlike a taboo subject or the use of euphemisms, a conspiracy of silence is limited to specific social and political contexts rather than to an entire culture.
Jeannie Mills, formerly Deanna Mertle, was an early defector from the Peoples Temple organization headed by Jim Jones. With her husband and Elmer Mertle, she co-founded the Concerned Relatives of Peoples Temple Members organization in 1977. Mills was murdered in 1980 along with her husband and one of her daughters, in a killing which remains unsolved.
The Summer of the Shark refers to the coverage of shark attacks by American news media in the summer of 2001. The sensationalist coverage of shark attacks began in early July following the Fourth of July weekend shark attack on 8-year-old Jessie Arbogast, and continued almost unabated—despite no evidence for an actual increase in attacks—until the September 11 terrorist attacks shifted the media's attention away from beaches. The Summer of the Shark has since been remembered as an example of tabloid television perpetuating a story with no real merit beyond its ability to draw ratings.
Benjamin Rudolph Frey was a right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball from 1929 to 1936, playing primarily with the Cincinnati Reds. He was a sidearm pitcher with a sweeping motion that was effective against right-handed hitters. Frey suffered an arm injury which ultimately led to his retirement and subsequent suicide.
Heaven's Gate was an American new religious movement known primarily for the mass suicides committed by its members in 1997. Commonly designated a cult, it was founded in 1974 and led by Marshall Applewhite (1931–1997) and Bonnie Nettles (1927–1985), known within the movement as Do and Ti. Nettles and Applewhite first met in 1972 and went on a journey of spiritual discovery, identifying themselves as the two witnesses of Revelation, attracting a following of several hundred people in the mid-1970s. In 1976, a core group of a few dozen members stopped recruiting and instituted a monastic lifestyle.
Altruistic suicide is the sacrifice of one's life in order to save or benefit others, for the good of the group, or to preserve the traditions and honor of a society. It is always intentional. Benevolent suicide refers to the self-sacrifice of one's own life for the sake of the greater good. Such a sacrifice may be performed for the sake of executing a particular action, or for the sake of keeping a natural balance in the society.
Charles Landis Shoemaker was an American professional baseball player. A native of Los Angeles, he appeared as a second baseman in parts of three Major League Baseball seasons for the Kansas City Athletics. He batted left-handed, threw right-handed, stood 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) tall and weighed 155 pounds (70 kg).
"Something I Can Never Have" is the fifth track by industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails from the 1989 debut album, Pretty Hate Machine. According to Loren Coleman, the song deals with suicidal themes.
Sacred Suicide is a 2014 edited volume about suicide and religion, particularly as it relates to cults or new religious movements. It was published by Ashgate and edited by James R. Lewis and Carole M. Cusack, part of the Ashgate New Religions series. Other contributors to the book include Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Mattias Gardell, and Thomas Robbins. It is divided into five sections.
