Web suicide pacts surge in Japan

While the statistics are easy and true on the surface, they are a tiny, tiny statistical blip in the overall number of Japanese suicides. 34,000 in 2003, to be exact. Put 34 into 34,000 and you get 0.1% of all suicides.

Something to focus a lot of policing or media attention on? Sure, maybe a little.

Just another example of something connected to the Internet getting seriously undue and unwarranted attention. Suicide is a horrible, irrational act. Trying to make sense of it in this manner is just scapegoating. It explains nothing, except that for some people, it’s easier to share one’s darkest moment of pain with a like-minded other.

The number of Japanese who killed themselves in suicide pacts made over the internet rose sharply last year.

Police said 91 people died in the pacts in 2005, compared with 55 in 2004 and 34 in 2003, when the records started.

Alarm at the rise has led to increased vigilance by internet service providers, who now report suspected suicide pacts to the authorities.

[...]

More than 34,000 Japanese took their own lives in 2003, according to the National Police Agency…

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 12 Feb 2006
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