Can we stop the suicides in Bridgend? 1

12th Sep 2008

Hello lovely people

There is a village in Wales in the UK, between Cardiff and Swansea, where 17 young people have committed suicides. The facts are not consistent – when did this start? If Natasha Randall was the twelfth victim in thirteen years, as one newspaper claims, who was the first, and exactly when did the first suicide occur? Did seven more people from the area commit suicide since 2006, or was it closer to twelve more?

But the speculation is consistent – certain websites are to be blamed, there are suicide pacts, there is nothing else to do in Bridgend and so on – nothing proven, but then who needs proof if the story is juicy enough?

And the Assistant Chief Constable of Bridgend was quoted as saying that similar spates of suicide had taken place in the US and Ireland in the past.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a fascinating book called The Tipping Point in which he describes social epidemics. This book is really worth reading but I will only explain some of his ideas.

Gladwell says that an epidemic has three key attributes. The first is that it is contagious – like yawning. Have you ever yawned and then noticed people around you yawning as well, for no reason? An epidemic does the same – it just spreads for no particular reason.

The second attribute is that a little cause has a massive effect. To give you an idea of this, take a reasonably sized piece of paper and fold it over. Then fold it over again, and continue to repeat this until you have folded the paper 50 times. How high would the piece of paper now be? You would not believe this – it will cover the distance between the earth and the sun. And it all started with just one fold that was repeated.

The third attribute of an epidemic is that there is one boiling point, the moment of critical mass where the balance is so disturbed that it tilts over. A dramatic example of this is where Lake Nyos in Cameroon turned red overnight and started emitting toxic gases that killed over 1700 people and all animals within a 15-mile radius.

It may be that this is what happened in Bridgend. One person was in such despair that suicide seemed the only option, the community was shocked, the facts stuck in the mind of another person who them also took his/her own life and so on, until it became a practice that people could associate with and regard as an option out of their misery.

One of the residents of Bridgend was quoted as saying “It’s become like a bit of an everyday thing. When the first one happened I was shocked but now it just seems normal, fashionable almost.”

The book The Tipping Point describes a fascinating study on suicide that was done by David Phillips, a sociologist at the University of California in San Diego, USA. He found a definite correlation between the number and timing of newspaper reports on suicides, and increased numbers of similar suicides in the area. His theory is that the newspapers contributed significantly to the contagious effect of the suicides, simply by reporting on the details so regularly.

When people that are living with pain read these media reports, they, in a way, get “permission” to consider suicide as an option to relieve the pain. And the more “instructions” the media provide by means of detailed and regular reporting, the more people that are vulnerable to suggestion accept the “instructions” and take their own lives. Especially when the media reports are about someone the community looked up to. The reasoning is that “if suicide is good enough for that person who is worth so much more than I am, then suicide is good enough for me. I will imitate the important person and get the same relief.”

And of course at some point individual events add up and form a critical mass, and the tipping point is reached. Is this what had happened in Bridgend in 2006, when the number of suicides suddenly increased?

There is complete balance in the Universe, but when the scale tilts to one side, we are so shocked and fascinated that we forget to look for the other side of the coin that will restore the balance. To be continued.

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Love and Light
Elsabe