Can a Copycat Effect be Observed in Terrorist Suicide Attacks?

Effect of 7 July 2005 terrorist attacks in London on suicide in England and Wales.

BACKGROUND A reduction in suicide in England and Wales has been reported after the attacks of 11 September 2001 in the USA. It may be plausible therefore to expect a much greater impact on suicide in the UK in response to the events of 7 July 2005, caused by the first suicide terrorist attack by Islamic extremists on British soil. AIMS To examine the effect of the 7 July 2005 terrorist attack...

The Cultural Dynamics of Copycat Suicide

The observation that suicides sometimes cluster in space and/or time has led to suggestions that these clusters are caused by the social learning of suicide-related behaviours, or "copycat suicides". Point clusters are clusters of suicides localised in both time and space, and have been attributed to direct social learning from nearby individuals. Mass clusters are clusters of suicides localise...

How Could a Copycat Ever Be Creative?

Analogy-making in a microdomain is used as the testbed for a computer model of creativity. Among the unusual features of the model are: (1) its nondeterministic parallel-processing architecture, modeled to some extent on architectures for perception; (2) the modeling of concepts as probabilistically overlapping regions; and (3) the fact that the system manufactures its own mutable representatio...

Effect of 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the USA on suicide in areas surrounding the crash sites.

BACKGROUND The terrorist attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001 affected suicide rates in two European countries, whereas overall US rates remained stable. The effect on attack site rates, however, has not been studied. AIMS To examine post-attack suicide rates in areas surrounding the three airline crash sites. METHOD Daily mortality rates were modelled using time series techniques. Where...

Suicide: where can help be found?