Suicide among adolescents and young adults

Abstract 

A closer analysis was made of all postmortems at the Benjamin Franklin Campus of the Institute of Forensic Medicine performed on juveniles who committed suicide at the age of 20 or below in the period from 1998 to 2003. A double suicide of a young couple, who met on the Internet and agreed on the procedure to be followed up to the act itself, which took place in Berlin, is presented as a representative case. The authors emphasise that in view of the danger of emulation, the media should exercise restraint in describing concrete details especially when reporting about suicides of juveniles.

Keywords: Werther effect, Collective suicide, Identity disorder, Suicides of juveniles