Synchronous death: What is the phenomenon of paired suicide
Dmitry Kurkin
In mid-August in the Russian city of Zheleznodorozhny 18-year-old Roman Shingarkin and his girl Alexander Solovyov were found dead - teenagers committed suicide by pairing themselves handcuffed to each other and leaving identical suicide notes on their VKontakte pages: “We both came to this and decided to leave. Together” . Since the sensational suicide of Pskov schoolchildren, this is the first time that double suicide has received similar publicity: Roman Shingarkin, among other things, was the son of ex-State Duma deputy and a participant in rallies Alexei Navalny. Dual and collective suicides are a regular line in the world criminal chronicles, what is their phenomenon and to what degree are they social?
Double suicides in the general stream of suicides are relatively rare (studies suggest a share of 0.6–4%); moreover, they cannot always be clearly identified: even judicial pathologists sometimes find it difficult to say whether both people died of their own free will or it would be more correct to say about the case of murder and suicide. As in the case of depression, which does not choose either by age, or by gender, or income level, double suicides do not necessarily fit into the plot schemes about unhappy lovers and hunted classmates. Thus, in July 2018, a mother and daughter were found dead in Australia who could not accept the loss of their son and brother, respectively, and financial problems.
Surprisingly, until the early 2000s, paired suicides were considered mainly the lot of elderly couples. And only with the development of the Internet and the increase in the number of suicides coordinated across the Web, the statistics began to change. “For young people, it is very important to be in trend,” says clinical psychologist Ilya Smirnov. “A bright pattern of others’s behavior can tell a teenager what to do. At one time, cases of admission of patients with the same cuts on their hands were very common. .
Pitirim Sorokin also mentions the “suicide leagues” - in fact, the prototypes of modern “death groups”: his work “Suicide as a social phenomenon” was published in 1913, but despite the prescription it remains surprisingly accurate and fair to this day. It deals with collective suicidal agreements and the phenomenon of imitative suicides, including mass suicides, the so-called Werther effect (named for the suicide wave that swept across Europe at the end of the 18th century after Goethe’s novel The Suffering of Young Werther); Russia had a similar effect "Poor Liza" Karamzin).
Noting the then theories of suicide (it was believed that it could be caused by "special mental illness," heredity, alcohol dependence, and even seasonal temperature drops), Sorokin indicates that the percentage of suicides is increasing as society grows. The larger the society becomes, the more it breaks up into smaller fragments - and the more people who fall into the cracks between these fragments feel unnecessary and unbuilt. Sorokin's reasoning is another proof that already a century and a half ago, suicide was a platform for strange, but undeniable socialization, and he had a sublime romantic aura in culture even earlier.
It is not always possible to determine whether a pair of "master" and "slave" was possible - even if the suicide note states that the suicide was an agreed decision
One of the products of this socialization was the double and collective suicides, both familiar people and anonymous, for whom, on the contrary, it is important that the suicidal pact partner was not a person from their environment. In either case, the attempted suicide leaves the zone of personal responsibility. It is no coincidence that in legal practice, suicidal pacts are increasingly beginning to equate with bringing to suicide, taking into account that in a couple (group) of suicides there is often a leading or leading one. So, in January of this year in Britain, a woman who abandoned her part of a joint suicide agreement, received four years in prison. At the same time, it is not always possible to determine whether a pair of "master" and "slave" was possible - even if the suicide note states that the suicide was an agreed decision.
No matter how crazy it may sound, suicides unite people according to their interests and inclinations. And those, in turn, are often fueled by the social environment, including the painful obsession with suicide, as well as any forbidden topic. This is partly confirmed by the fact that suicidal subcultures are especially well spread where they fall on the local peculiarities of attitude towards suicides as an act of personal elevation. As, for example, in Japan, where the tradition of ritual suicides is strong: in the middle of the zero in the country there was a jump in collective suicides among people who were not tied by anything except dating in thematic chat rooms.
"For adolescent communities, the tendency to flock together is typical, and the subcultures arising on this basis largely determine the child’s lifestyle. Goths, "- says Ilya Smirnov.
It is logical that the "social symptoms" of suicidality lead in some countries to attempts at government regulation. So, at the beginning of the year, the South Korean authorities decided to make the fight against suicide a national project. The country’s suicide rate is one of the highest in the world — 25.6 suicides per hundred thousand people per year on average, and the government insisted on introducing an annual psychological examination for people aged forty to eighty (according to local sociologists, this age group especially often feels unnecessary and socially unprotected) and compulsory education for military personnel (another traditional risk group). Among other things, we are talking about criminal liability for involvement in the so-called suicidal pacts: South Korean residents often seek partners for joint suicide not even in the “death groups” or deeply secretive subject forums, but in a trite way through tweeting. The Cabinet of Ministers proposes to pay special attention to the romance of suicide in popular culture.
Modern psychology does not consider that a person belonging to a risk group should be kept in informational isolation and “Anna Karenina” hidden from him.
Control of social networks and pop culture in the fight against the "promotion of suicides" after the scandalous publication of "blue whales" began to talk in Russia. But as in other countries, any attempts to clean out all suicidal public messages from the Network, firstly, bring only short-term effect, and secondly, create a noise level in the media, which only stirs interest in the topic. The administration of VKontakte faced this, which, after the story of the whales, rushed to block suicidal content and discovered that the surge in relevant publications happened after the whales were widely discussed in the media and social networks.
What gives rise to questions that neither the social sciences nor pop culture can answer yet: how to talk about the problem of suicide so as not to promote the very idea of suicide - not to mention the ways to commit it? How to avoid cheap sensationalism that spreads like wildfire among anxious public? How to prevent group suicides without destroying the very possibility of communication between people (after all, prohibitions provoke only a struggle for the very sites of dialogue)? How to warn about the danger, but not to create an unhealthy excitement, inevitably spurs interest in the topic?
This dilemma remains unresolved both in the media and in pop culture - to recall at least last year’s release of the TV series Thirteen Reasons Why, whose creators were accused of glamorizing teenage suicide (and which in practice produced a dual effect: on the one hand, the number of calls to psychological help hotlines, on the other - the growth of search queries on suicide).
Any details regarding suicide or attempted suicide can be a psychological trigger for those who are suicidal. And yet, modern psychology does not believe that on this basis one should keep a person belonging to a risk group in information isolation and hide Anna Karenina from him. All this does not negate the importance of trying to understand that at one time or another causes a person or group of people to part with life. And practical assistance to specific people who find themselves "on the verge", or even the cultivation of "friendly" public relations.
Suicide prevention is ultimately the qualified help of a psychologist (because suicide is not a "disease", but the result of a disease). And in the long run, it is the ability to get help or timely information that such an opportunity exists, which becomes much more effective means of preventing suicides than banning books, films, manga and access to the Internet.
Photo: Unclesam - stock.adobe.com, AlessandraRC - stock.adobe.com