Strange happenings in Bridgend

Here’s one I stole earlier from the gifted if wordy Torcuil Crichton of The Sunday Herald. I am of course too ‘umble to venture any opinion of my own ever at anytime without the supervision of an adult or intelligent chimp:

Suicide rates across the UK are generally falling, but the latest statistics, show that the Bridgend rates were higher than the national average. When one follows another in quick succession, the temptation to link the deaths, inadvertently or in banner headlines, can prove too much. From this, a suicide cluster may be born.
The way the public, the television, press and official facilities have all interacted has created a phenomenon that has gone beyond suicide. There has been fevered speculation that the online commemoration of many of the dead had, at the very least, given their deaths an aura of heroism and inverse celebrity that has somehow legitimised suicide as a means of solving these young people’s problems. The link between the deaths isn’t the internet. It is the way the media is reporting the news. NUMEROUS studies attest to the power of the media to multiply suicide rates. A study published in Vienna last year showed that when media guidelines were implemented in Austria, there was a reduction in suicide.
Suicide itself is as old as recorded history and cases of the media being blamed for a spate of copycat deaths go as far back as the publication of Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” – an 18th century story of a young artist who shot himself after an ill-fated love affair. Werther fever, as it became known, was believed to have inspired scores of young men to end their lives in the style of the book’s sensitive hero.
The one ray of light for Bridgend – and Wales, which statistically has the highest number of suicides in Britain (19.4 per every 100,000 men and 17.4 for the same number of women) – comes from Scotland:
Plagued by an unusually high rate of suicide among young men, the Scottish Executive took action in 1999 to deal with the issue. A national suicide strategy has been in place since 2002 and now seems to be bearing fruit. Choose Life is Scotland’s 10-year strategy and action plan aimed at reducing suicides in Scotland. It receives £4 million in funding per year to stretch across Scotland’s 32 local authority areas. Before the suicide strategy was put in place, you were twice as likely to end your life in Scotland than you were if you lived in England, and if you were in the Highlands – four times as likely.
Suicide rates for men and women in Wales were higher between 2004 and 2006 than Northern Ireland, England and Scotland. This is why the Welsh Assembly is now rushing out its own suicide strategy, which is based on the Scottish model. Scottish public health minister Shona Robison has offered the Welsh Assembly any help it needs to institute a new policy.
Consensus among academics and the experts is that it is better to talk about suicide than bestow it with an air of mystery or taboo by ignoring it. But through the echo chamber of the press and the internet, the anger of police and the bereaved families has been amplified while the individual pain that caused the deaths, and its aftermath, is lost.
:wink:

@toybulldog wrote:

excellent post that, yes I heard of that Goethe thing too.

well done esmeralda
x

Google is a wonderful tool.

Top marks Fasty and Genie (you literary freak :wink: ) for observation…having read the article,

“Despite the spate of apparent suicides and the openness in communication about the deaths on online social networking sites, South Wales Police insist there is no evidence of suicide pacts or an internet cult in the area. There is, they say, only one link in the chain of deaths – the press coverage.”

NO,no,no..of course it’s not Bebo or Myspace they have thousands of users..internet, could be if there was evidence of some of them using the suicide chats..but there isn’t. So now they are blaming the media coverage, no doubt it might enhance the situation, but c’mon, something is very wrong somewhere……..where? And that is the question.

@lil fek wrote:

Top marks Fasty and Genie (you literary freak :wink: ) for observation…

Esmeralda has a remarkable, almost professional insight into every topic she posts on. It doesnt take much working out that she is in fact using the words of others to portray her opinion and make out that her level of intellect is much higher than it actually is.

The inadequately educated amongst you would appear to be getting your collective knickers in a twist over a post which was inserted because I thought it was wonderfully relevant. Whatever talents I have not extending to osmosic knowledge of the suicide statistics of Bridgend – I would have thought it glaringly obvious that this was a gleaned piece of research and not a conjuring feat of facts and figures plucked from my own imaginings. I didn’t quote the newspaper in question for one big fat reason – they don’t allow representation of their articles in any way shape or form – but I thought it addressed the issues discussed here so thoroughly that I didn’t want to pass the opportunity to share it.
Thank you for alerting the Herald to my misdemeanour and I look forward to spending a few months in the pokey.
Incidentally, fastcars. On the rare occasions that I post – lo and behold you pop up after me with some trite disparaging remark, like a vengeful pixie. Keep it up li’l fella, I like a good laugh.