In a
Newsweek article by Zach
Schonfeld (4.4.2014), the author explores the death of Kurt
Cobain (who died on 9th April 1994), the way it was handled
in the US media, and why it did not appear to cause copycat deaths, given that
such a high profile death of someone much loved by millions of fans could have
led to a series of deaths through identification.
The
article draws on a very thorough exploration of Cobain's suicide in the Seattle
Times by Charles Cross (11.3.2014) http://www.seattleweekly.com/home/951542-129/happens-every-day-the-suicide-of also
the author of a newly released book: 'Here We Are Now: The Lasting
Impact of Kurt Cobain'
The
intriguing issue is that the suicide rate in the Seattle region actually
decreased in the weeks following Cobain’s death. This is against all that we
believe about high profile suicide reported in the media, and people have tried
to understand the reasons for the disparity. David Jobes examined the aftermath in an article in Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior, (26:3,
260-271) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sltb.1996.26.issue-3/issuetoc concluding
there were several factors behind the decrease: positive aspects of the
media coverage, outreach efforts by local crisis centres, and perhaps the
suicide method - violent, even to someone at risk.
In our
own research study published a year after David Jobes' paper, we hypothesised
another element - that Courtney Love had managed the media explosion very well,
damning the act of suicide, and noting that Cobain was at the beginning of
immense success. Probably all these factors are at work, and provide a lesson
for Media and Press coverage. Be careful, don't provide too much detail, don't
glorify, provide opportunities for grief and grief work.
Stephen Stack,
an eminent US researcher provides a miserable and
particularly useless comment: “Neither of these are
well-designed investigations,” he argued in an email reported by
Schonfeld. “Jobes’s article was based solely on the Seattle area and had
extremely small numbers of suicides to investigate. The other study was done in
Australia. We generally find that suicide stories concerning foreign
celebrities have little or no impact in other nations.”
What rubbish! Cobain
and Nirvana had international influence as a stellar grunge group. It is always
so good to be living in Australia and have your work totally dismissed by US
researchers.
Well,
dear readers, you can make up your own minds... Further to the Newsweek article
to mark the 20th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide, our paper is offered as
a free download. The research examines whether the death of Kurt Cobain had an
impact on suicides in Australia? Apparently it did not - which goes against our
understanding of the impact of high profile suicide. Reasons for this are
examined
Martin,
G. & Koo, L., 1997. Celebrity Suicide: Did the death of Kurt Cobain
influence young suicide in Australia? Archives of Suicide Research, 3:3,
187-198.
If you are interested in these issues of influence and
copycat, you may also be interested in:
Martin G., 1998.
Media Influence to Suicide; the search for solutions. Archives of Suicide Research, 4:1,1-12.
Download here: MediaInfluencetoSuicide
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