vulnerable audience in encouraging help-seeking and normalizing mental health problems. Late twentieth/early twenty-first century research An example occurred in Vienna, Austria where the media reporting increased dramatically the number of copycat suicides. Reduction began when a working group of the Austrian Association for Suicide Prevention developed media guidelines and initiated discussions with the media which culminated with an agreement to abstain from reporting on cases of suicide. Examples of celebrities whose suicides have triggered suicide clusters include Ruan Lingyu, the Japanese musicians Yukiko Okada and hide, the South Korean actress Choi Jin-Sil, whose suicide caused suicide rates to rise by 162.3% and Marilyn Monroe, whose death was followed by an increase of 200 more suicides than average for that August month. Another famous case is the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire on December 17, 2010, an act that was a catalyst for the Tunisian Revolution and sparked the Arab Spring, including several men who emulated Bouazizi's act. A 2017 study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found the online series 13 Reasons Why which chronicled a fictional teen's suicide was associated with an increase in suicide related Internet searches, including a 26% increase in searches for "how to commit suicide", an 18% increase for "commit suicide" and 9% increase for "how to kill yourself". On May 29, 2019, research published in JAMA Psychiatry outlined an association of increased suicides in 10- to 19-year-olds in the United States in the three months following the release of 13 Reasons Why, consistent with a media contagion of suicide in the show. However, some media scholar studies implied that viewing 13 Reasons Why was not associated with suicidal ideation but actually with reduced depressive symptoms. The cause-and-effect relationship between media and suicide is not simple to prove. Prof. Sonia Livingstone emphasized the claim of causality in media-effect cannot be considered conclusive because of different methodological approaches and disciplinary perspective. Even if it is accepted that media can have an effect on suicidal ideation, it is not a sufficient condition to drive people to commit suicide; the effects that media can have on suicidal behaviour are certainly less important than individual psychological and social risk factors. See also Blue Whale Challenge Copycat crime Epidemiology of suicide Herd behavior Mass shooting contagion Meme Sati (practice) References Further reading The Copycat Effect () Suicide Clusters () External links International Association