Confronting Suicide: Clustering, County-Level Correlates, and Media Effects in the United States
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The epidemiology of suicide has long been an area of interest for researchers, health professionals, and policymakers, with a recent emphasis on the potential consequences of suicide contagion, where one person’s suicide influences future suicides through local knowledge or depictions of the suicide in the media. Previous epidemiological literature has failed to estimate the effects of media portrayal on future suicides within a region by not appropriately accounting for the potential effects of homophily in suicide contagion. Using the National Center for Health Statistics’ Multiple Cause of Death data from 2000 to 2004, I first identify clusters of suicides over space and time within the United States using a spatio-temporal scan statistic. I then approach an estimate for the causal effect of media portrayal of suicide on future suicides within a cluster by analyzing suicide counts in the month immediately before and immediately after an article within a cluster detailing a specific suicide is published. I find that newspaper articles may be associated with higher suicide levels in the next month overall, but when looking at suicides by the same gender and with the same method as the subject of the article, there are much greater effects. These results show evidence for contagion effects in suicide at the local level with an emphasis on homophily in social influence.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | May 2019 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Pienkny, Max Bennett |
|---|---|
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Department of Economics |
| Primary advisor | Bhattacharya, Jay |
Subjects
| Subject | Stanford University |
|---|---|
| Subject | Department of Economics |
| Subject | suicide |
| Subject | suicide contagion |
| Subject | suicide clusters |
| Subject | suicide homophily |
| Subject | media effects |
| Subject | suicide in the United States |
| Subject | economic epidemiology |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
| Related item | |
|---|---|
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/gr453pb4669 |
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Pienkny, Max Bennett. (2019). Confronting Suicide: Clustering, County-Level Correlates, and Media Effects in the United States. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/gr453pb4669
Collection
Stanford University, Department of Economics, Honors Theses
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- Contact
- maxp123@stanford.edu
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