World News for Students of English

15-06-2022 07:00

Celebrity suicides flood social media and the news. While mental health coverage is important, doctors say that they must be told with care to avoid suicide contagion.

Suicide contagion happens when vulnerable individuals are exposed to too much detail about suicide in a film or news report. The exposure can lead to an increased risk of suicide.

Young people are at particular risk because teens are more influenced by peer models and by what they see and hear. Young people have little experience of crises, and they don’t always understand that crises get better.

According to doctors, some people think more in the abstract. They don’t want to live, but they don’t have active plans to die. However, when they see or hear too many details of a suicide, abstract thinking can become more real.

Difficult words: coverage (a report about an issue by the media), contagion (an influence that spreads quickly), peer (a person of the same age, social position, or with the same abilities as other people in a group).

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