17th suicide in Bridgend

[iglu]

Here Very sad...

[Enuff]

Damn! This is extremely sad and very very odd???

[jkat]

could possibly be hysteria??

I know Wales is a depressing place but this is extreme.

Police say there is no evidence of a "criminal, cult or internet" link between the incidents.

Well start looking a bit harder Sherlock because if these are "random" then just about every statisical record has probably been broken.

[iglu]

Somebody looked at bebo and found links web pages of the dead teenagers pages and suicide films/song etc

I think the police is incompetent, I was looking into this 2 weeks or so ago when 15 &16 suicide happened....

[BBKing]

Well start looking a bit harder Sherlock because if these are "random" then just about every statisical record has probably been broken.

Statistics is usually ahead of you here - humans aren't equipped to understand statistical anomalies without special training. However, in this case, don't discount the possibility of copy-catting, which certainly applies in other violent action cases like school shootings in the US. Still, let's not let mathematics and psychology distract us from having a go at the Internet, shall we?

Of course, there are other obvious but sad truths; young people have always taken their own lives, particularly in teenage years when the hormones are going nuts, we're perpetually blaming the young for society's ills and both main parties have had policies of depriving them of proper education*, not to mention testing them to destruction so middle class parents know where to buy houses.

* see http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_s...a-the-ill.html

[Mick]

Who gives a stuff about statistics - sometimes some people get blinded by numbers that it prevents them from seeing the real picture.

Let's look at the facts shall we.

17 suicides of young people - apparently all unconnected since Jan 07.

However, trends and statistics start to go out of the window when the fact two of the young teens found last week, lived on the same street.

[Sarcasm Mode]

Yes, this happens a lot where I live. Does it occur where you live?

[/Sarcasm Mode]

[WHISTLED]

However, trends and statistics start to go out of the window when the fact two of the young teens found last week, lived on the same street.

They were cousins though - One of them was on holiday abroad at the time and killed themselves shortly after hearing the news. They had been brought up together and were very close indeed.

Thats understandable.

[Damien]

Yeah, The first few could have been just normal suicides. They were then followed by other people who were depressed enough to consider it, saw others around the same area doing it, and copy-catted as it were.

Although each suicide is equally tragic. Especially for the families of those concerned..It's not just the death, it's the knowledge that they were so depressed that must add so much to a already high degree of loss.

[Nidge]

Something is not quite right down there, something very strange is happening, it's a sad waste of such young lives.

[BBKing]

Who gives a stuff about statistics

Practically everybody in charge of anything in developed nations? This is no time for anti-intellectualism, Mick, it's too serious for that.

17 suicides of young people - apparently all unconnected since Jan 07.

In what area? Compared to what baseline? I'd better refer people to the National Statistics website, updated today for all of us to do our own analyses, which I've checked out - generally suicides have been going down for nearly a decade. However, the younger and maler you are the more likely you are to commit suicide. Men are way, way more susceptible, in fact the most obvious thing that suggests something odd and worrying is going down in Wales is that a number of the victims are young women, who are the *least* likely historically.

The other thing about Bridgend that stands out is that it bucked the national reducing trend for male suicide - from 1991-1997 (before the current economic boom) it was 113th on the national list of areas, from 1998-2004 it went up to 48th. That's for men 15+. For women it went down from 247th to 291st, so they're even less likely - there were only 15 suicides *total* for women in that area in six years 1998-2004.

Going back to the male statistics, the rise from 113rd to 48th was 65 places. The highest in the country was 328 places, 352nd to 24th for ...Blaenau Gwent (Harlow also was this bad). In fact South Wales seems a bit of a hotspot:

Blaenau Gwent: 352nd -> 24th
Caerphilly: 365th -> 65th
Vale of Glamorgan: 350th -> 209th
Bridgend: 113rd -> 48th
Rhondda Cynon Taff: 205th -> 81st
Merthyr Tydfil: 111th -> 40th
Neath Port Talbot: 27th -> 27th (in other words it was already pretty bad)

In other words South Wales has had an increasing suicide rate while the UK national trend has been downwards.

This is a bit crude, admittedly - it obscures the fact that North Wales and rural West Wales was already pretty poor, but getting better. South Wales was good, except Neath Port Talbot, but getting worse. If that's continued up till now, what we're seeing is a larger issue brought to media attention by a particular set of circumstances, and it could be a whole lot worse. Any South Wales residents able to shed any light?

[Mick]

Originally Posted by BBKing

Practically everybody in charge of anything in developed nations? This is no time for anti-intellectualism, Mick, it's too serious for that.

If you say so. But I prefer to look at the real picture than get blinded by patterns or trends seen in *numbers*.

Originally Posted by BBKing

I'd better refer people to the National Statistics website, updated today for all of us to do our own analyses, which I've checked out - generally suicides have been going down for nearly a decade.

Thanks, but no need to refer me to anything. I checked that this afternoon.

Nothing you have posted about so called statistics indicates or suggests an explanation in the events which are occuring in Bridgend.

[Damien]

On Sky News they said, albeit very quickly, that the National Statisics say that it's about or only slightly above what they would expect given the area/other demographics.

[foreverwar]

One of the chapters (chapter 7, p216-220, paperback) in a book called "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell is about a spate of suicides in Micronesia, and defined it as "suicide ideation".

It's summarised in point 4 on this page
"One chapter, for example, deals with the very strange epidemic of teenage suicide in the South Pacific islands of Micronesia. In the 1970's and 1980's, Micronesia had teen suicide rates ten times higher than anywhere else in the world. Teenagers were literally being infected with the suicide bug, and one after another they were killing themselves in exactly the same way under exactly the same circumstances. We like to use words like contagiousness and infectiousness just to apply to the medical realm. But I assure you that after you read about what happened in Micronesia you'll be convinced that behavior can be transmitted from one person to another as easily as the flu or the measles can."

It may not be the answer, but it's a possible explanation.

[Hom3r]

What about some kinda brain washing?