Re: Is Suicide Contagious? A Case Study in Applied Memetics

From: Kenneth Van Oost (Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be)
Date: Sun Apr 15 2001 - 20:48:24 BST

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    From: "Kenneth Van Oost" <Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be>
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    Subject: Re: Is Suicide Contagious? A Case Study in Applied Memetics
    Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 21:48:24 +0200
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    ----- Original Message -----
    From: J. R. Molloy <jr@shasta.com>
    To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
    Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2001 3:29 PM
    Subject: Re: Is Suicide Contagious? A Case Study in Applied Memetics

    From: "Kenneth Van Oost" <Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be>
    > The bias where I work with to understand this all, is by Van Heeringen,
    > a Dutch professor who works in the Academic Clinic, Ghent.
    > I suppose he has a webside...

    Apparently van Heeringen works mostly with homosexuals.

    << I am sorry to say but here you are not completely intellectual honest.
    Van Heeringen don 't work mostly with homosexuals, what an idea !!
    It is just that suicide or suicide attempts are more frequently by homo-
    sexuals.
    One rapport mentions that by 404 youngsters ( all homosexual) 25 % of
    the bisexual and lesbian girls tried at least ones to commit suicide.
    For boys that is 12, 4 %.
    For hetero's: girls 5, 4 % for boys 5, 9 %

    45 % of the quetioned girls thinks sometimes at committing suicide, for
    boys that is 33, 3 %.
    By hetero's is that respectivibly 24,3 % and 16,1 %
    Especially the girls form a very delicate group within the group of young-
    sters. They try more to commit suicide than boys. For boys it counts that
    the attempt ends up more into death.
    See,

    http://openuniv.rug.ac.be/ned/upv/activiteiten/zelfmoord.htm

    Le laboratoire de Psychologie Médicale

    http://www.iph.fgov.be/epidemic/morbidat/NL/shortcut.htm

    or E- mail, cornelis.vanheeringen@rug.ac.be

    http://www.uke.uni-
    hamburg.de/Clinics/Psych/TZS/suiridalitaet/daten/frame_e.
    html

    http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/IASR/suicide-rates.html

    I speculate that one of the elements of suicidal contagion is high IQ, since
    there is a correlation between IQ and suicide. Of course, without
    intelligence, memes don't propagate at all, so what I'm referring to here is
    intelligence that deals with abstractions.

    << From what I know about this stuff ( and that is a lot) there may be
    a correlation between IQ and suicide but not in the pespective you have
    put it.
    The role of genetic and biological (f)actors is only one of the six
    attention-
    points where we must concentrate ourselves onto.
    The other five are,

    The influence of sociocultural characteristics
    Psychiatric risk factors like depression
    The sentivity for social stresses
    Treshold diminising factors like drugs and alcoholabuse and de existence
    of suicidal examples
    The effectiviness of prevential methodes towards suicidal behavior.

    In which a high IQ may play a role but not the one...

    Recent inquires show that an important element is the suicidal proces.
    The proces consist out of observable and non- observable characteristics
    which lead up to clues for an underlying predisposition.

    Best,

    Kenneth

    ( I am, because we are) not suicidal

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