ArticleScience advances2024
Quantifying suicide contagion at population scale.
Article in Science advances, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Mental health in elite athletes: International Olympic Committee consensus statement (2026).British journal of sports medicine · 2026Article
- From Pressure to Peril: Investigating the Drivers of Suicide Planning and Attempts in University Students Struggling with Academic Anxiety.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Exposure to Suicidal Behavior by Sexual and Gender Minority Status Among Adolescents in the Southeastern United States.The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine · 2025Article
- Socio-Spatial Patterns of Suicide Mortality in the United States.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Sexual Orientation and Exposure to Close Others' Self-Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors.JAMA network open · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The spread of suicidal behavior among individuals is often described as a contagion; however, rigorous modeling of suicide as a dynamic, contagious process is minimal. Here, we develop and validate a model-inference system depicting suicide ideation and death and use it to quantify the contagion processes in the US associated with two prominent celebrity suicide events: Robin Williams during 2014 and Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, which occurred 3 days apart during 2018. We show that both events produced large transient increases of suicide contagion contact rates, i.e., the spread of suicidal thought and behavior, and a period of elevated suicidal ideation in the general population. Our modeling approach provides a framework for quantifying suicidal contagion and better understanding, preventing, and containing its spread.
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Registered trials
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.