Medical historians believe that suicide epidemics, like most other collective psychoses, took place in ancient times. They shook the Middle Ages too.
For example, Plutarch mentions an epidemic of suicide among Milesian girls, and Montaigne writes about the collective suicide of the brave and proud inhabitants of Xanthus besieged by Brutus. In history, there are cases of mass suicides of Jews during the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans, as well as of collective suicides of Christians in the period from Nero to Constantine the Great.
At one time, the story of 30 disabled people who, in 1772, one after another hanged themselves on the same hook, became widely known. A similar incident occurred in 1805 in Napoleon's camp, when several soldiers committed suicide in the same booth. A similar epidemic was reported in an English regiment on the island of Malta. There are also known cases of collective suicide among the French military in 1862, 1864 and 1868.
Another type of mass suicide - death in fire - most likely stems from some ancient pagan cult, which was associated with human sacrifice and was especially widespread among the eastern peoples: Hindus, Japanese, Koreans. For example, self-immolation epidemics often broke out in medieval China.
Massive epidemics of suicides have not spared Russia either.
Suicides occurred most of all at the end of the 17th century and during the 18th century in the north-east of the country. They raged mainly among adherents of the old faith, or schismatics, who burned themselves, drowned, starved themselves. Moreover, they destroyed themselves not only in tens or hundreds, but also in thousands at the same time. Their charred, disfigured corpses lay on fires or floated up in rivers. And they did all this most often in the heat of religious fanaticism …
Other, and very far from belief, reasons can also cause a wave of suicides. Thus, Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, published in 1774, whose protagonist shot himself in unhappy love, not only brought the writer fame, but also led to massive imitative suicides throughout Europe.
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It would seem a long forgotten story. However, more than 200 years later, that is, in our time, the American sociologist David Philips drew attention to the Werther phenomenon. After studying suicide statistics in the United States for more than 20 years, he found that within two months of the headlines of a suicide, the state where the tragedy was highly publicized had an average of 58 suicides. more than usually.
The scientist explains this by the fact that, at a given time in a given place, the same factors influenced the suicides, for example, magnetic storms, pushing them to suicide. However, this explanation can hardly be considered correct. The fact is that the increase in suicides is directly dependent on how widely the fact of suicide was covered in the press. In neighboring regions, where the conditions are the same, but the newspapers do not publish reports of suicide, everything remains normal.
Another supposed explanation for Werther's phenomenon emphasizes the fact that only well-known people in society usually publish reports of suicides on the front pages. Therefore, perhaps their death plunges readers into shock and deep despondency, and they are in this state and commit suicide.
Especially fertile soil in the brains of a potential suicide find those messages that detail the reasons and method of committing suicide.
In December 1925, the life of Sergei Yesenin was cut short: the poet hanged himself. On the eve of his suicide, he wrote a short poem with blood, which ended with the following lines: "In this life, dying is not new, but living, of course, is not new." And immediately after Yesenin's death, a wave of suicides swept across the country. And the poet's wife committed suicide right at his grave.
In August 1962, actress Marilyn Monroe died. Her tragic death led to over two hundred suicides committed within a month.
When a popular Canadian TV reporter hanged himself on a belt in 1999, the incident received widespread local media coverage, leading to a 70% increase in suicide by hanging.
But not only real events "tell" people the possible option of suicide, not only celebrities "push" them to do so. In 1981, a television film was shown in Germany, in which it was shown in detail how life's troubles "pushed" a young man under the wheels of a train.
In the two months after the screening of the film, the number of suicides under the wheels of trains almost doubled, and among young men 15-19 years old - three times. The re-screening of the film two years later led to an increase in "railroad" suicides by 20% …
Analyzing the statistics of suicides, Phillips discovered another curious fact. When suicide was reported on the front pages of the newspaper, the number of plane crashes and fatal traffic accidents increased. At the same time, stories about the suicides of individuals provoke car and plane crashes in which one person dies. On the other hand, reports of suicide, combined with homicide, lead to an increase in the number of accidents with a large number of victims.
Phillips suggested that all of these disasters were suicides, but disguised as an accident. He believes that they are deliberately provoked by victims who wanted to kill themselves, but at the same time preserve their reputation or allow relatives to get insurance policy.
Of course, it is rather difficult to agree with such an explanation. Most likely, the victim does not plan ahead for the suicide. Simply, being under the impression of "murderous" information, she can make a ridiculous and unintentional mistake.
The mechanism that works in this situation is called unconscious imitation, or mental infection. And it happens most often when the sample is somewhat similar to an imitator. To test this, Philips looked at accident reports involving one car and one driver.
It turned out that if the newspaper described the suicide of a young man, then it was the young drivers who crashed into trees, posts and fences; if the message involved an elderly person, it was mostly drivers of the same age who died in accidents.