Effect of suicide prevention law and media guidelines on copycat suicide of general population following celebrity suicides in South Korea, 2005–2017

Abstract

Objective: To prevent copycat suicides following media reporting of celebrity suicides, the South Korean government enacted a ‘suicide prevention law’ in 2012 and revised the media guidelines for suicide reporting in 2013. This study examined how these two regulatory measures affected suicide trends among the general population in South Korea. Methods: We analyzed the individual effect estimates for the general population within 30 days following the media report of 24 celebrity suicides using multivariate negative binomial regression. We performed a meta-analysis to compute the pooled rate ratios of the two regulations. We examined the trends in daily suicides by month during three time intervals before and after enactment using an autoregressive model and tested their significance using a piecewise linear regression. Results: Total suicides increased by 6.27 daily during the 30-day period after celebrity suicides. Compared with the 30 days prior to the reports on the suicide of 24 celebrities, the number of suicidal deaths in the general population increased by 13% during the 30 days after the reports were announced (pooled rate ratio 1.13, 95% confidence interval: 0.06–0.18; p < 0.001). There was a significant downward trend in the average daily suicide deaths, and no significant increase in suicide rates, after the enactment of the suicide prevention law ( p < 0.001) and revision of the media guidelines ( p = 0.014). Conclusions: Suicide prevention and media guidelines were effective in reducing the effect of celebrity suicides. In addition to regulating media reporting of celebrity suicide, measures are needed to address viral republication on social media and to prevent suicide among entertainers.