Evidence map›Paper›PMID 18800195›Full record

ArticleCulture, medicine and psychiatry2008

Too lonely to die alone: internet suicide pacts and existential suffering in Japan.

Chikako Ozawa-de Silva

Abstract read
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In one paragraph

Article in Culture, medicine and psychiatry, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
24citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

24 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Review
  5. Article
  6. A Psychometric Pilot Study Examining the Functions of Suicidal Communications Using IRT and Factor Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022
    Article
  7. Article
  8. A Conceptual Review of Loneliness in Adults: Qualitative Evidence Synthesis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021
    Review
  9. Article
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. Ageing and the Case of Democratic Medicine in Japan.Journal of cross-cultural gerontology · 2020
    Article
  15. Carbon monoxide poisoning.Toxicology reports · 2020
    Review
  16. Epidemiology of Suicide and the Psychiatric Perspective.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2018
    Review
  17. Online and Social Media Suicide Prevention Interventions for Young People: A Focus on Implementation and Moderation.Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry = Journal de l'Academie canadienne de psychiatrie de l'enfant et de l'adolescent · 2016
    Article
  18. Case study of posts before and after a suicide on a Swedish internet forum.The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science · 2015
    Article
  19. Review
  20. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

1 author.

Chikako Ozawa-de SilvaDepartment of Anthropology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA. cozawad@emory.edu

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Most striking in the recent rise of suicide in Japan are the increase in suicide among young Japanese and the emergence of Internet suicide pacts. An ethnography of suicide-related Web sites reveals a distinctive kind of existential suffering among visitors that is not reducible to categories of mental illness and raises questions regarding the meaning of an individual "choice" to die, when this occurs in the context of an intersubjective decision by a group of strangers, each of whom is too afraid to die alone. Anthropology's recent turn to subjectivity enables analyses of individual suffering in society that provide a more nuanced approach to the apparent dichotomy between agency and structure and that connect the phenomenon of suicide in Japan to Japanese conceptions of selfhood and the afterlife. The absence of ikigai [the worth of living] among suicide Web site visitors and their view of suicide as a way of healing show, furthermore, that analyses of social suffering must be expanded to include questions of meaning and loss of meaning and, also, draw attention to Japanese conceptions of self in which relationality in all things, including the choice to die, is of utmost importance.

Indexed as

Attitude to DeathExistentialismStress, PsychologicalAdultAge FactorsCultureHumansJapanSuicide

Identifiers

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.