Bridgend, a Welsh town of around 40,000 people, has been mak­ing the news, and the local MP, Madeleine Moon doesn’t like it.

“Abso­lutely everything I’ve seen from the descrip­tion of Bridgend as a ‘death town’, ‘sui­cide town’, talk­ing about sui­cide ‘cults’ is abso­lutely dis­grace­ful and has actu­ally cre­ated addi­tional risk for young people,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“I’ve got no prob­lem with the media report­ing some­thing. What I have is a prob­lem with the breach­ing of all the guidelines.

“For example, the Samar­itan guidelines are very clear that you should never men­tion the cause of death because what you get is then copycatting.

“There is very clear evid­ence of this. And what have we got? Huge num­bers of head­lines here abso­lutely rev­el­ling almost in the cause of death, in the way death took place.”

Is Moon right? Let’s take a look at the Bridgend head­lines from the past month.

The Sun and News Of The World:

• Bridgend’s 14th sui­cide — Feb­ru­ary 6, 2008
• Sui­cides town in farewell to Tasha — Janu­ary 31, 2008
• Police to probe a town’s 13 sui­cides — Janu­ary 28, 2008
• Street of sui­cide — Janu­ary 27, 2008
• Happy Luke new sui­cide spree vic­tim — Janu­ary 26, 2008
• 12 more teens in sui­cide risk — Janu­ary 25, 2008
• Please don’t do what my boy did — Janu­ary 24, 2008
• Gloom of dark skies
• Bebo mates ‘in sui­cide chain’ — Janu­ary 23, 2008

The Daily Mail:

• 14th teen­ager found hanged in sui­cide town — Feb­ru­ary 6, 2008
• Tragedy of the woman who blamed her­self for being raped — Janu­ary 26, 2008
• Inter­net sui­cide town’s death toll rises to 13 in a year — Janu­ary 25, 2008
• A town on sui­cide watch as toll rises to 13 in just a year
• I walked in the front door and found my Leah hanging from the stairs. She was breath­ing but only just; As police probe ‘web sui­cide cult’, a father recalls his har­row­ing dis­cov­ery — Janu­ary 24, 2008
• We are cre­at­ing a gen­er­a­tion for whom real­ity now exists only on a com­puter screen
• In just 12 months, seven tra­gedies in one small town — Janu­ary 23, 2008
• THE INTERNET SUICIDE CULT?; Chilling links between seven young­sters found hanged in same town They lived and died online — Janu­ary 23, 2008
• Wild child who surfed her way to suicide

The Times:

• Teen­ager who planned to marry is Welsh town’s 14th young sui­cide — Feb­ru­ary 6, 2008
• Our love wasn’t enough to stop James killing him­self — Feb­ru­ary 3, 2008
• Sui­cide is wrong, vicar tells mourners
• Sui­cide: a teen’s way to instant fame: As Bridgend tries to under­stand why it has a cluster of seven teen­age sui­cides, our cor­res­pond­ent finds bored or des­per­ate youths may see death as the only thrill left — Janu­ary 27, 2008
• Scramble to curb sui­cide web­sites — Janu­ary 26, 2008
• Des­per­ate town asks for National Lot­tery money to help stop spate of young deaths
• Dark­ness visible
• The Bridgend enigma — Janu­ary 25, 2008
• The lethal ‘glam­our’ factor
• What beauty is there in a young life snuffed out?
• Class­mates seek help as another girl in Bridgend tries to com­mit suicide
• Fash­ion­able web­site where teen­age sui­cides are a cause for cel­eb­ra­tion — Janu­ary 24, 2008
• Nata­sha, 17, is the latest vic­tim in a town hit by seven copycat sui­cides — Janu­ary 23, 2008

The Guard­ian:

• Media: Sens­it­iv­ity and sui­cide: Last week’s cov­er­age of the sus­pec­ted ‘copycat sui­cides’ of seven young people in Wales has raised ques­tions about press spec­u­la­tion — Janu­ary 28, 2008
• Bridgend sui­cides: Why did they die so young? Police re-examine files on 13 tra­gedies: As detect­ives look again at the deaths, few local people believe the the­ory of an inter­net pact — Janu­ary 26, 2008
• Taskforce to look into pos­sible links between youth sui­cides — Janu­ary 24, 2008
• Police sus­pect inter­net link to sui­cides: Seven young people found dead in last 12 months Mother urges par­ents to mon­itor com­puter use — Janu­ary 23, 2008

The Mir­ror reports focused on the anguish of par­ents. One paper does stands out, though. Here are the head­lines from the Express:

• ANOTHER GIRL HANGS HERSELF IN DEATH TOWN; Inter­net cult linked to 14th sui­cide in a year — Feb­ru­ary 6, 2008
• We’re baffled why they do it
• Sui­cide No.14 rocks inter­net cult town
• Linked by web of des­pair — Janu­ary 26, 2008
• HOW MANY MORE OF OUR CHILDREN WILL SUCCUMB TO THE SUICIDE CULT?; As experts believe as many as 13 young people have now com­mit­ted sui­cide in Bridgend, we reveal how panic has taken hold of the town, with fam­il­ies fear­ful for their own chil­dren — Janu­ary 25, 2008
• Dangers that lurk on friends’ web­sites — Janu­ary 24, 2008
• Sui­cide is ‘cool’ says friend of death cult gang
• Seven die in sui­cide ‘craze’; Fears of death cult with links to web chat sites — Janu­ary 23, 2008

Does report­ing cre­ate addi­tional risk for young people? The Samar­it­ans guidelines (linked above), which start badly by sug­gest­ing report­ers use such sterile expres­sions as “per­son at risk of sui­cide”, are actu­ally quite sens­ible:

Avoid expli­cit or tech­nical details of sui­cide in reports. Report­ing that a per­son died from car­bon monox­ide pois­on­ing is not in itself harm­ful, how­ever provid­ing details of the mech­an­ism and pro­ced­ure used to carry out the sui­cide may lead to the imit­a­tion of sui­cidal beha­viour by other people at risk. Par­tic­u­lar care should be taken in spe­cify­ing the type and num­ber of tab­lets used in an overdose.

The reports of hanging all point out that it is a pain­ful and viol­ent way to die.

My answer to Ms Moon? The dead are immune to blame, but the media often provide a use­ful and cath­artic cat to kick in times of trouble.

But is that response good enough? How about this fas­cin­at­ing account from Hong Kong in 2002, which appeared as a let­ter in the Brit­ish Med­ical Journal:

In Nov 1998, a 35-year old woman left a sui­cide note and burnt char­coal in a bar­be­cue grill within her sealed and cramped apart­ment. This swiftly gen­er­ated a lethal level of car­bon monox­ide. The incid­ent includ­ing the meth­od­o­logy of the act was pictori­ally repor­ted in the local news headlines.

Nine sim­ilar cases fol­lowed and were repor­ted the sub­sequent month. Com­pared to jump­ing that had accoun­ted for most sui­cide deaths in Hong Kong, char­coal burn­ing sui­cide appeared to have been roman­ti­cized as an easy, effect­ive and com­fort­able way of end­ing life that could hap­pen within one’s home.

Two months after its first appear­ance, char­coal burn­ing became the third com­mon­est method of sui­cide in Hong Kong. In 2001 it has replaced hanging as the second com­mon­est method of sui­cide, account­ing for 25% of all sui­cide deaths.

Prior to the emer­gence of the method, car­bon monox­ide pois­on­ing was uncom­mon in Hong Kong. This might be due to explo­sions caused by domestic coal gas sui­cide claim­ing inno­cent cas­u­al­ties. Moreover, the lim­ited own­er­ship of private vehicles pre­cludes auto­mobile exhaust poisoning.

Vic­tims of char­coal burn­ing were often por­trayed as debt-ridden as Hong Kong was exper­i­en­cing its first reces­sion after two dec­ades of con­tinu­ous eco­nomic boom. Char­coal burn­ing was rep­res­en­ted as a legit­im­ate way out of the sui­cidees’ fin­an­cial predicaments.

Based on a study of the first 100 cases of char­coal burn­ing sui­cides using data col­lec­ted by the Coroner’s Court, we found that the pro­files of the vic­tims were highly com­pat­ible with media rep­res­ent­a­tions, involving mostly adults aged 25– 54(88%), unmar­ried (71%), absence of his­tory of men­tal dis­orders (87%) and a high pre­val­ence of debt (58%).

This is con­sist­ent with Hawton’s sug­ges­tion of the sim­il­ar­it­ies between the media model and the observer. It seems that char­coal burn­ing has not only worked as a sub­sti­tute but actu­ally attrac­ted a new cohort of indi­vidu­als to com­mit suicide.