Suicide: Media Impacts in War and Peace, 1910–1920

Suicide: Media Impacts in War and Peace, 1910-1920

Steven Stack, PhD Auburn University

ABSTRACT: The literature of the impact of publicized suicide stories on suicide has neglected the influence of social contexts. In the present study, the context of a popular war was inspected. A Durkheimian perspective was tested, wherein the context of war would lower suicide through promoting social integration. Suicide stories in such times should have less of an impact than in times of peace. Data were collected on widely publicized suicide stories during the World War I decade. A Cochrane-Orcutt iterative time series analysis found that publicized suicide stories during war had no impact on suicide. In contrast, peacetime suicide stories were associated with an increase of 48 suicides. This is significant, since the electronic media were nonexistent and hence could not reinforce the publicity in the printed media, as they do today. Further analysis of the relationship found similar results for New York City.

Work on the impact of publicized suicide stories on suicide in the real world has blossomed in recent years (Baran & Reiss, 1985a, 1985b; Bollen & Phillips, 1982; Phillips, 1974, 1979; Phillips & Bollen, 1985; Phillips & Carstensen, 1986; Phillips & Paight, 1987; Platt, 1987; Schmidtke & Hafner, 1986; Stack, 1987a,b; see Phillips, 1986, for a review). One recurrent flaw in the research, however, is the neglect of the social context of the suicide story. For example, suicide stories that appear in times of high social integration might be expected to have less impact than stories that appear in times of low social integration. In the case of the former, audience receptivity to the story should be relatively low. By contrast, in the case of low integration, the mood of the audience should be more amenable to imitating suicidal behavior. That is, for example, in times marked by severe economic downswings,

The work on this paper was supported by Grant Nos. MH38209 and MH41510 from the National Institute of Mental Health. I would like to thank Cathy O’Brien, Zoe Poole, Rita Stack, and Martha Faupel for their help in organizing the data file. This is a revised version of a paper read at the annual meeting of the American Association of Suicidology, San Francisco, 1987.

342 Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, Vol. 18(4), Winter 1988

0 1988 The American Association of Suicidology

STACK 343

high marital disruption rates, and so on, suicide stories should have more of an impact, given the bad mood of the mass audience.

The study reported in the present paper reassessed the impact of publicized suicide stories by inspecting the context of a popular war. In such times, social integration is said to be relatively high and the propensity toward suicide relatively low (Durkheim, 1897/1966; see Stack, 1982, for a review). Hence, the central hypothesis of the present study was that the impact of publicized suicide stories during a popular war would be lower than the impact during peace. Although this is certainly not the only social context that might mediate the impact of the press on suicide, it is one that could be studied with the data available.

The period of the 1910s was also chosen for reasons related to stages in the development of the mass media and their audience. Radio was not invented and disseminated until the 1920s. This period would represent a difficult test for imitation theory, since the messages contained in the printed media could not be reinforced and further publicized by radio and television, as they have been in more recent times. Hence, the imitation effect, if any, may have been much lower. In addition, the education level of the public was lower. This implies that the public’s awareness of national events was less than it is today (Jencks, 1972). These difficult conditions would represent a further challenge to testing the power of imitation theory.

Contextual Factors: Popular Wars and Suicide

That American social integration increased during World War I is a widely held opinion of American historians (Bedford & Colburn, 1976, pp. 390-396; Graebner, Fite, & White, 1975, pp. 631-635; Rozwenc, 1973, pp. 263-272). For example, Rozwenc refers to such developments as increased government control of the wartime economy, labor’s concessions to the war effort (such as giving up the right to strike), the mobilization of public opinion, victory gardening, and the organized repression of dissent-all moves to support the national war effort- as the “collectivism of war.” Such subordination of the individual to group life is the essence of what sociologists have termed “social integration,” a factor often associated with low suicide rates according to the Durkheimian perspective (Durkheim, 1897/1966).

The impact of war on suicide has attracted attention from a variety of perspectives. Several explanations have been posited for the often- observed decline in suicide during popular wars. These include the social integration argument of Durkheim (1897/1966), the redirection

344 SUICIDE AND LIFE-THREATENING BEHAVIOR

of would-be inner-directed aggression to aggression directed against the external threat (Henry & Short, 19541, the transfer of civilian suicides to heroic acts on the battlefield, and the economics-based argument of Marshall (1981).

Durkheim (1897/1966, pp. 204-208) provides data and theoretical reasons for the dip in suicides during great national wars. For example, suicide decreased by 14% in both Austria and Italy during the Austrian-Italian war of 1866. This dip might be viewed as the transfer of suicides from civilian life, where they would be recorded, to military life on the battlefield, where suicides would be difficult to record. However, Durkheim presents data showing that the dip in suicides held for females as well as males. Since females, especially in Durkheim’s day, were not enlisted in the armed services, it would seem that war does in fact reduce suicide. Such great wars are seen as rousing the collective spirits, increasing patriotism, and stimulating the national faith. The abatement of suicide in war is explained in terms of Durkheim’s general integration argument. In times of great popular wars, the individual thinks less of himself or herself and more of the common cause. The subordination of one’s self to the common cause is central to the life-saving meaning of integration. Unpopular wars, in contrast, do not rouse the passions; because they lack an effect on integration levels, they will have little impact on suicide.

The work since Durkheim has usually supported a negative association between a popular war and suicide. This has been documented in work on individual nations, such as that by O’Malley (1975) on World War I1 in Australia. In addition, cross-national work has supported Durk- heim’s general thesis. For example, Sainsbury (1972, pp. 193- 194) found that suicide dropped during World War I1 in 21 of 22 nations studied. The exception was Spain, a nation troubled by an internal civil war. Studies providing further documentation are discussed else- where (Stack, 1982, p. 58).

Work in the psychoanalytic tradition has contended that suicide is largely a homicide directed against the self. Popular wars are thought to redirect aggression away from the self and against the external threat presented by the enemy. This perspective has been brought to sociology by Henry and Short (1954, pp. 102, 122); however, they did not rigorously test their hypothesis. Work by Rojcewicz (1971) for six European nations during World War I1 did not support any simple, direct link between the presence and development of an external threat and a decrease in suicide. In contrast, measures of the extent of an external threat to Australia were usually significantly associated vi ith dips in suicide in Australia; these dips, however, were interpreted from the standpoint of a modified Durkheimian perspective as opposed to

STACK 345

psychoanalytic perspective (O’Malley, 1975). Although the evidence for psychoanalytic theory is mixed, the research does find a dip in suicide during popular wars.

A third explanation is quite simple. That is, suicide is said to decrease during war because suicidal people join the armed services, where their suicides are concealed on the battlefield. Indeed, the military may label self-destructive acts in combat as heroic, thus encouraging suicide (Raines & Thompson, 1950, pp. 103-104). This view that suicide declines in wartime because of the battle deaths of the suicidal population is not consistent with data from most nations on age-specific rates of suicide. That is, the decline in suicide observed in most nations during wartime occurs in every age bracket, not just those most apt to be involved in actual combat (Rojcewicz, 1971, p. 48).

A fourth explanation for the suicide dip during wars stresses economic conditions. Recent work on the case of the United States questions the Durkheimian explanation, in particular. Marshall’s (1981) analysis of World War I1 and wars thereafter indicates that war reduces suicide not through the promotion of social integration per se, but through the reduction of economic anomie (i.e., through lowering unemployment). Marshall did not, however, include World War I in his analysis.

Regardless of which perspective we adopt, it is assumed that war reduces the tendency toward suicide. In particular, it may externalize aggression, promote social integration, and improve economic oppor- tunities. In this context, popular wars provide a prophylactic against suicidal tendencies. Given increased protection against suicide in war, it was argued in the study reported here that suicide stories should not have as much of an impact on the population during wartime as in peacetime. That is, in peacetime, at least three conditions protecting the population from suicide might be removed: the externalization of aggression toward an enemy nation, banding together in an integrated war effort, and a prosperous wartime economy. Hence, peacetime pop- ulations should be more susceptible to suggestion found in suicide stories. The central hypothesis to be tested in the current study was as follows: Wartime suicide stories will have less of an impact on suicide than peacetime suicide stories. For a variety of reasons, the context of war provides a cushioning or discouraging effect for suicidal behavior. Wartime suicide stories should have less appeal to their mass audience.’

The link between publicized suicide stories and suicide in the real world can be interpreted from the standpoint of several perspectives, including Tarde’s (1903, 1912) laws of imitation, behavior decision theory, and anomie theory. These explanations, if all else were equal, would hold for both peacetime and wartime suicide stories. For a discussion of these explanations, see Stack (1987b).


Methodology

Data on suicide were collected from the U S . Bureau of the Census (1913-1922). These refer to the number of suicides in the nation’s death registration area (DRA). Caution should be exercised in interpreting the results, since there is some problem with the representativeness of the DRA (Diggory, 1976, p. 32). For example, in 1900 the Western states were not included in the DRA, while 40.5% of the population was included. Given that Western states had relatively higher suicide rates, this biased the suicide rate of the DRA downward. However, Western states were added in the period 1901-1910. These included California, the most highly populated state from that region and the one most noted at the time for its high suicide rate. By 1910, 58.3% of the nation’s population was covered by the DRA. Still, there are probably some measurement errors involved in the use of the DRA as an index of the actual national suicide rate. Nevertheless, the standard practice is to regard the statistics based on the expanding group of registration states as the best available index of the national figures (Seiden, 1969, p. 8h2

Diggory (1976, p. 32) implies that the growth of the DRA was somewhat irregular and that the suicide rate based on it may be unreliable. As his evidence, he notes that the suicide rate of the DRA increased 58% in 15 years, from 11.3 in 1900 to 17.9 in 1915. This, he alleges, is probably due to the addition of the Western states, most notably California, which had a very high rate of 28.9 and was not admitted to the DRA until 1906. Further scrutiny, however, of the Mortality Statistics volumes of the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1906-1918) cast serious doubt on Diggory’s critique. For example, one- third of the population of California had been included in the DRA all along as DRA cities (US. Bureau of the Census, 1906, p. lxxiii). Furthermore, California was a relatively small state (1.6 million in 1906) compared to the other DRA states (e.g., New York had over 8 million, Pennsylvania had over 6 million, and even Indiana had 2.7 million). In actual fact, the addition of the rest of California to the DRA was associated with a decline in the suicide rate, from 16.1 in 1905 to 14.3 in 1906 in the DRA (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1908, p. 86). As to what did account for the 58% rise in suicide from 1900 to 1915, socioeconomic factors are the apparent cause. There was a general upswing in suicide in the period across the whole country. For example, in New Hampshire, suicide increased 87.3%, from a rate of 8.7 in 1900 to 16.3 in 1915; in New Jersey, the rates went from 11.5 to 17.7, an increase of 53.9%; the increase in New York State was 49.1% (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1906, p. lxxiii; 1917, p. 59). The growth of the DRA was rather gradual, and the additions to it had only small influences on the overall suicide rate. For example, the addition of Nebraska in 1920 increased the population of the DRA by only 1.1%. Its suicide rate (12.2) was higher than that of the DRA (10.3). If we omit Nebraska from the DRA of 1920, the suicide rate is the same, 10.3. In some years no states were added (1912 and 1915). Given that the present study analyzed within- year variability, the measurement error problem was largely restricted to the changeover from one year to the next, while the within-year variation was valid. The DRA changed only once a year. Given that the results of the present study were based on time-series techniques, which first-differenced the data between adjacent time points, the most serious measurement error would have appeared in January. Controlling out monthly seasonal variation for January should have controlled out a good deal of any measurement

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The dependent variable was the number of suicides per 100,000 population. Only yearly midyear population estimates were available for the 1910-1920 period (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1923, p. 635). Monthly population estimates were calculated by applying the rate of population growth for the United States as a whole (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1976, p. 81, from year to year, to the DRA's p~pulation.~ This methodology was viewed as an improvement over a past work on a related subject, which divided the monthly suicide counts by the population of the nation as a whole-a population that was larger than that of the DRA covered by the U.S. Census at the time. In addition, the past work did not use the available annual, midyear population estimates, but only two population estimates, those of the 1910 and 1920 census. This former methodology obscured the variability in the rate of population change within the 1910s by applying a linear interpolation technique based on only two observations to all years (Wasserman, 1983).

Caution should be exercised in interpreting the results, given that they were based on these official data. Although the measurement problems with official statistics are generally not large or systematic enough to preclude meaningful analysis (Pescosolido & Mendelsohn, 1986), that study was based on cross-sectional data.

A key methodological problem was finding a set of publicized suicide stories. This issue was addressed in the following manner. First, lists of suicide stories were reviewed in the New York Times (NYT) Index. This paper was selected for the first phase of screening stories, since it was the only one with an index for the period under study. It had several other advantages. It is published in the nation's largest city. Also, because New York City is a cultural center marked by strong mass media institutions, it is likely ,that many of the stories originating in New York would have been disseminated to other parts of the nation. For the period of the 191Os, the population of the United States was disproportionately located in the Eastern states-another advantage of using an Eastern paper for a source paper. Following Phillips (19741, the present study focused on stories that made page 1 of the NYT. These were the ones, it was assumed, that would have been most apt

error resulting from an expansion of the DRA in January. Furthermore, the suicide trends in many states followed the same general trend of the DRA. For example, the surprising decline in suicide after World War I was found in the individual states as well as the DRA. It was not a function of the addition of Nebraska in 1920 or of several states in 1919.

The rate of population growth in the United States generally declined from 1.05% from July 1, 1909 to July 1, 1910, to 0.25% from July 1, 1918 to July 1, 1919. Given such variation in the rate of change, it was important to use annual data in calculating population changes, as opposed to applying the same rate of change derived from decennial censuses for the entire 11-year period.


to make national news. A total of 258 suicides made page 1 news in the NYT during the 1910-1920 time frame. This is, relative to other time periods (e.g., that studied by Phillips, 19741, a large number. However, 85 of the stories appeared in a single year, 1913, under an editor who wrote an editorial arguing against any allegations of a n imitative effect! Many of these 1913 stories were about ordinary people residing in New York City, and they probably did not make national news.

The second phase of the screening process involved checking other newspapers to see whether they carried stories on any of the 258 suicide victims from the NYT. Two papers were checked: the Washington Post and a Southern paper, the Charleston News-Courier. These papers were selected for pragmatic reasons: They were the only ones available for 1910-1920 in the local library, and efforts to secure other newspapers through interlibrary loan failed due to lack of cooperation from the lending libraries. The present study defined a “publicized’ suicide story as one that made page 1 in all three newspapers. There were 19 stories that met this requirement.

The present study followed the same rules governing the definition of a suicide story as in the past research (Phillips, 1974). For example, stories about the general topic of suicide or suicides that occurred in the distant past were not counted in the present study. In addition, stories appearing after the 23rd of the month were assumed to have had the most impact on suicide in the following month; these were, therefore, coded as affecting the suicide rate in the month following the story. In an analysis not reported here, 1-month lag terms for the story variables were introduced to test for longer delayed effects. None were significant, so they were dropped.

Control variables were introduced for conditions that may have con- taminated any relationship between suicide and publicized suicide stories. First, 11 monthly dummy variables were introduced, as in the past research (e.g., Phillips & Bollen, 19851, to deseasonalize the time series. A worsening economy tends to increase suicide (Platt, 1984). Stories coming out during a downswing may increase suicide not through imitation, but through their coincidental association with negative economic conditions. The control variable for economic conditions was the Ayres Business Activity Index (Ayres, 1939, pp. 193-196). Given that national monthly unemployment data are unavailable for this period, the Ayres Index has been viewed as the best available index of economic conditions by analysts of violence (Henry & Short, 1954; Wasserman, 1983). A dummy variable was introduced for the months of U.S. involvement in World War I (April 1917 to November 19181.

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The Analysis

The analysis first used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression techniques. These results are given in column 1 of Table 1. Before any interpretation of the results of this equation was possible, i t had to be checked for the potential problems of autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity (HS). Autocorrelation involves a situation that violates one of the basic assumptions of regression analysis: The error term and its lag are significantly correlated (Lewis-Beck, 1980). The results shown in column 1 indicated such a significant correlation (p = 0.90). The Durbin- Watson d statistic indicated strong negative autocorrelation. Given the autocorrelation in this form of the equation, an autoregressive form was estimated to see whether i t could purge the series of the problem (Ostrom, 1978). This specification used a lagged dependent variable as an independent variable. Given that it was an autoregressive model, this equation was tested for the problem of autocorrelation using the Durbin h statistic (Durbin, 1969). The h statistic is a normally distributed variable with a critical region of k 1.64. Values of h lying within this region clearly denote the absence of significant autocorrelation. The results (h = -4.25) indicated significant autocorrelation. Although this tactic greatly reduced the degree of autocorrelation, the error term was still significantly correlated with the lag of the error term (p = -0.33). The coefficients, however, still had intuitive appeal at this stage of the analysis. As an aside, for now, these OLS estimates indicated that the suicide rate increased by 0.83 units in months with a peacetime suicide story. This means that, on the average, there were 48 more suicides than we would expect in months with publicized peacetime stories. Given the continued problem of autocorrelation, a third purging technique, the Cochrane-Orcutt (CO) procedure, was employed (Ostrom, 1978, pp. 39-40). This iterative procedure begins with transforming the data into firstdifference scores. The autoregressive specification of this procedure was successful in purging the series of autocorrelation; i t is presented in column 3 of Table 1.

A second issue involved HS, a problem that violates one of the key assumptions of regression analysis (Johnston, 1984; Lewis-Beck, 1980). It was possible, for example, that the story variable may have been affected by random shocks in the time series. Baran and Reiss (1985a) contend that this may be the case in an analysis of the impact of publicized suicide stories on the national suicide rate. To check to see whether the variance in the error term was associated with any of the independent variables, the Glesjer (1969) test for HS was performed. The absolute values of the residuals from the CO regression were re-

TABLE 1. The Effect of Wartime and Peacetime Publicized Suicide Stories on the National Suicide Rate, 1910-1920

Variable 1. 2. 3.

OLS I OLS I1 co I Estimated coefficients

Lag of suicide rate

Wartime story

Peacetime story

Ayres Business Activity Index

War dummy

Constant

R2 Durbin-Watson d Durbin’s h statistic Autocorrelation coefficient ~._ ~~~ ~ ~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~ ~

- (-)

-0.14 (-0.08)

1.13* (1.76)

-0.006* (-2.11) - 1.84*

(-2.93) 13.05*

(18.89) 0.27 0.23

0.90* -

- . ~-~

Glesjer test for heteroscedasticity

0.89* (21.59) -0.18

(-0.22) 0.83* (2.91)

-0.0006 (-0.46) -0.10

(-0.33) 0.94 (1.44) 0.85 -

-4.25 -0.33*

~~~~ ~~

0.95* (35.9) -0.25

(-0.39) 0.54* (2.39)

-0.0005 (-0.62)

0.03 (0.14) 0.05 (0.12) 0.88

- 1.29 -0.11

-

Lag of suicide rate - - 0.01 (0.40)

Wartime story - - -0.54 (-1.31)

Peacetime story - - -0.09 (-0.59)

(-0.62) Ayres Business Activity Index - - -0.0005

War dummy - - 0.07

F statistic for equation - - 0.77 (0.42)

Note. Numbers in parentheses refer to the t-test statistics. The r e m i o n eoefficienta for the remaining variables in the model (11-month dummy variables to deseasonalize the data) are not shown for reamna of clarity and brevity. The coefficients and t statistics for the final model’s monthly dummy variables (column 3) are as follows: January (0.82, t = 1.661, February (-0.09, t = -0.24). March (2.90, t = 6.83), April (0.88, t = 2.121, May (1.64, t = 3.93). June (-0.14, t = -0.34), July (0.01. t =

0.03). August (-0.34. t = -0.841, September (0.30, t = 0.711, October (0.46, t = 0.37), November (0.15. t = 0.31). * p < .05.

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gressed on the story and other independent variables. The results of the Glesjer test are given in the lower half of Table 1. None of the coefficients of the core independent variables, including the story variable, were significant, indicating the absence of HS disturbances for these variables. In addition, none of the temporal control variables had significant coefficients at the .05 level. Finally, it was possible that the variables taken together might precipitate a significant level of HS. To test for this possibility, the F statistic was calculated for the entire equation. The F statistic was, however, insignificant. It was concluded, then, that the results shown in Table 1 were not due to HS; the “artifact” hypothesis of Baran and Reiss (1985a) was not supported for this time series. We can now proceed to the interpretation of the findings in column 3 of the top half of Table 1.

When the other independent variables were controlled for, months with publicized wartime suicide stories had no impact on the suicide rate. The wartime story coefficient was only -0.39 times its standard error. This variable’s coefficient was negative, the direction counter to that of the peacetime coefficient. The coefficient for peacetime stories was significant. When the other predictor variables were controlled for, peacetime months with a publicized suicide story had significantly more suicides than months without a publicized suicide story. The peacetime suicide story’s coefficient was 2.39 times its standard error. The measure for economic conditions, the Ayres Index, was not significantly related to the suicide rate, independent of the control variables. The World War I dummy variable was also not related to the incidence of suicide. The model explained 88% of the variability in suicide.

The relationship between publicized peacetime suicide stories and suicide could possibly be a statistical artifact. As a check on these results, a “bogus” model was estimated, following the recommendations of Baran and Reiss (1985a). That is, the results shown in column 3 of Table 1 might be spurious. To test this part of the “artifact” thesis, Baran and Reiss (1985a) recommend exploring the impact of a story on violent behavior in a temporal period where it should not have any effect. To test for the artifactual impact, the present study matched the story variable with the suicide rate the year after the story appeared. If the imitation thesis being tested was correct, the coefficient of this futuristic bogus term should be insignificant. The results are given in column 1 of Table 2. The term representing the bogus publicized peacetime suicide stories was insignificant. The bogus wartime story term was, however, significant. This is probably due to the fact that the January 1918 wartime story was matched with January 1919, the month of a peacetime story about the tragic suicides of two shell- shocked Red Cross nurses, who were twins. As a further test of the


TABLE 2. The Effect of Wartime and Peacetime Publicized Suicide Stories on the National Suicide Rate, 1910-1920: Bogus Models

Variable

1. 2. Futuristic bogus Retroactive bogus

co co Estimated coefficients

Lag of suicide rate

Wartime story

Peacetime story


War dummy

Constant

R2 Durbin’s h statistic Autocorrelation coefficient

0.96* (38.1) - 1.24*

(-2.18) -0.15

(-0.15) -0.0008

(-1.11) 0.02

(0.12) -0.05

(-0.11) 0.90

-0.87 -0.08

-0.19* (-3.38)

0.20 (0.39)

-0.07 (-0.32)

0.007* (1.74)

(0.49) 14.72* (8.74) 0.82

-0.35

-2.26 -0.16*

Glesjer test for heteroscedasticity

Lag of suicide rate 0.02

Wartime story -0.20 (1.07)

(-0.53)

(- 1.68) Peacetime story -0.24

Ayres Business Activity Index -0.001

War dummy 0.10 (- 1.52)

(0.73) F statistic for equation 0.76

0.02 (0.74)

-0.43 (-1.00) -0.04

(-0.24) -0.0003 (0.13)

-0.06 (-0.30)

1.25

Note. The numbers in parentheses are t-test statistics. The regression coefficients for the remaining variables in the model (11-month dummy variables to deseasonalize the data) are not shown for reasons of clarity and brevity. * p < .05.

artifact thesis, a retroactive bogus model was estimated, where the suicide rates were matched with the story variables a year before the stories occurred. These results appear in column 2 of table 2. Again, the peacetime bogus story term was insignificant. The bogus wartime story term was also insignificant. Some caution, however, needs to be exercised in interpreting these results. Although they were free of HS,

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I was unable to find a technique that would purge them of autocorrelation. The amount of autocorrelation (p = -0.16) was, however, slight.

Discussion

The present results support theoretical expectations. Peacetime publicized suicide stories were associated with increases in suicide, whereas wartime stories on suicide were not. The lack of a relationship, however, for the wartime stories and suicide needs some critical appraisal. It could be that an improvement of the national economy during World War I was responsible for this effect. This possibility is called into question, however, by the regression results in Table 1. The coefficient for the World War I dummy variable was insignificant.

The failure of the World War I variable to be significant may have been due to the curious finding that suicide continued to drop after the war was over. The data on suicides per 100,000 population in the death registration area were as follows (Linder & Grove, 1943, p. 265):

0 1916: total, 13.7; male, 20.7; female, 6.4 0 1917: total, 13.0; male, 19.2; female, 6.6 0 1918: total, 12.3; male, 18.2; female, 6.2 0 1919: total, 11.5; male, 16.5; female, 6.3 0 1920: total, 10.2; male, 14.5; female, 5.7

Although there was a dip during the war years of 1917 and 1918, this abatement of suicide continued after the war ended in late 1918. This general pattern held for both males and females.

Possibly an explanation might be that economic conditions improved both during and after World War I, resulting in low suicide rates for the entire period. Annual data on unemployment support this position (Gordon, 1981). Unemployment fell from 4.6% in 1917 to 1.4% of the labor force in 1918. It remained at 1.4% during 1919, but rose to 5% thereafter. Hence, the continued fall of suicide in 1920 is not explained by an economic perspective.

Two other factors might serve as explanations: the great influenza epidemic and the Eighteenth Amendment to the US. Constitution. The influenza epidemic peaked in 1919. More Americans died in that epidemic than did in World War I. It is possible that the epidemic may have lowered suicide. To the extent that suicidal people were more likely than nonsuicidal people to be in poor physical health, they would have been at a greater risk of influenza. Some may have died of influenza


instead of suicide. Some persons who would have ordinarily died of suicide may have died from the flu instead. This period was also precisely the time of the Eighteenth Amendment, which brought about Prohibition. Given that alcohol consumption is directly related to depression, a reduction in its consumption should be associated with a decline in suicide (Fisher, 1928).

Still another explanation of the failure for the two wartime suicides to trigger additional suicides can be drawn from differential identification theory (Matthews, 1968; Stack, 1987b). It is contended that the suicides of villains should have no or little impact on suicide, given that the public will not identify very much with villains. The wartime suicides were all, it turns out, suicides of villains. In both instances, the wartime suicides were murder-suicides. One, a captain in the U.S. Army, for example, committed suicide after he was alleged to have murdered four of his own men. Hence, the failure of these suicides to provoke imitative suicides may have been due to the public’s lack of identification with the victims involved.

Further analysis is needed in order to assess the impact of World War I on suicide. We need, for example, to expand the number of stories under analysis to obtain more reliable results. This could be done by focusing on the suicide rate in New York City. If New York City were to be used as the unit of analysis, all the eight wartime suicide stories found in the NYT could be used, as opposed to the relatively small number making all three target newspapers.

Data on the monthly counts of suicide in New York City were collected from the New York City Department of Health (1987). The same source provided population estimates for the calculation of suicide rates. The analysis followed the same pattern as in Table 1; the effects of autocorrelation were purged through the CO iterative procedure. The results are provided in Table 3. A distinction was made between peacetime and wartime ~ t o r i e s . ~ When the other variables were controlled for, peacetime stories were associated with a drop in the New York City suicide rate. In contrast, wartime stories had no impact on suicide in the city. Hence, even with a greater number and variety of types of stories, stories in wartime had no impact. The results of the analysis

A preliminary run using the sheer number of suicide stories on page 1 of the NYT found an insignificant coefficient for peacetime stories. Given the unusually large number of stories (258), there were months with as many as 13 page 1 stories. Given that a saturation point was apt to be reached, wherein additional page 1 stories would not provoke the same increases in suicide (a “tipping effect”), nonlinear models were run. The tipping effect proved to be significant at the point of three or more stories per month. The results reported here were based on that equation. The wartime stories, however, were coded simply as 1’s.

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TABLE 3. The Effect of Wartime and Peacetime Publicized Suicide Stories on the Suicide Rate in New

York City, 1910- 1920 ~

Variable

Lag of suicide rate

Wartime story

Peacetime story


War dummy

Constant

R2 Durbin’s h statistic Autocorrelation coefficient

Estimated coefficients

co 0.70*

(9.23) 0.14

(0.13) 0.82*

(1.77) -0.002

(-0.74) -0.41

(-0.64) 5.29*

(4.04) 0.51 0.62

-0.02 ~

Note. Numbers in parentheses are t-test statistics. The regression coefficients for the remaining variables in the model (11-month dummy variables to deseasonalize the data) are not shown for reasons of clarity and brevity. * p < .05.

based on New York City were the same as those based on the nation as a whole. Incidentally, this also provides some support for the validity of the data based on the DRA.

Conclusion

This study found that wartime suicides had no impact on monthly suicide rates. Peacetime suicide stories, in contrast, had a significant impact in both the United States as a whole and New York City. This latter finding is consistent with the past work of Phillips (1974, 1979) on post World War I1 samples. It is important to note that the peacetime news stories in the 1910- 1920 era could not be reinforced by the electronic media; radio did not emerge as a mass medium of communication until the 1920s. Nevertheless, even without the help of the electronic media, well-publicized stories in the printed media were associated with increases in suicide.


The present findings are based almost exclusively on cases of noncelebrity suicides. They indicate, then, that if noncelebrity suicides receive enough media publicity, they can have a significant impact on suicide. This is in contrast to the reported findings of Wasserman (1984), which, however, are f l a ~ e d . ~ Nevertheless, although many of the suicides in the present study were noncelebrities, they tended to be persons of high social status (e.g., physicians, the very rich, and the political elite). More analysis is needed to see whether suicides by noncelebrity elite members were responsible, more than noncelebrity nonelite suicide stories, for the increases in suicide during the 1910s.

Surprisingly, the measure of economic conditions, the Ayres Index, was unrelated to suicide. This may have been due to lack of enough variation in unemployment in the 1910s relative to other periods (Was- serman, 1983, p. 717).

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Documents

Suicide: Media Impacts in War and Peace, 1910–1920