British Journal Article Warns of Internet Suicide Pacts
The Internet may be giving rise to an alarming new trend known as "cybersuicide," a top British psychiatrist warned in a leading medical journal.
The practice involves strangers who meet on special Web sites to plan their deaths, wrote Dr. Sundararajan Rajagopal in the British Medical Journal. Such sites offer detailed descriptions of suicide methods, including specifying overdoses of particular medications that would cause death, he wrote.
Rajagopal, of London's St. Thomas Hospital, cited an incident in October in which nine people appeared to have died this way in Japan, according to an account by BBC News Online.
He said these types of Web sites could trigger suicidal behavior in vulnerable people, particularly teenagers and other young people who live alone.
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