Internet Pushes Suicide

A new study of the Internet has revealed that a suicidal person has a greater chance of finding suicide promotion/facilitation information than prevention on-line. From the story:

Researchers from the Universities of Bristol, Oxford, and Manchester replicated a typical Internet search by someone looking for information on suicide. They plugged 12 different search terms related to suicide into each of the four most popular search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask. They then analyzed the top ten sites from each search.

Overall, the searches uncovered 240 unique sites about suicide, just under half of which provided information about how to commit suicide. Nearly one-fifth of the hits as well as the top three most frequently occurring sites were for pages that promoted suicide. Only 13% of the sites were dedicated to suicide prevention and support, and only 12% actively discouraged suicide. Most of the sites—even some of those dedicated to suicide prevention—provided information on methods of suicide.

Today’s research highlights how easy it is to obtain information on how to commit suicide on the Internet and how a surfer is more likely to come across sites that encourage suicide than those that offer support and help.