When Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (about a depressed young man who eventually kills himself) was published in 1774 and re-released in 1787, real suicides reportedly followed; as a result, copycat suicide clusters are sometimes called the "Werther Effect."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide

I think it's fascinating, and sad, that "personal knowledge of the person who died" had almost no effect per the current study.

And I mean literally. I can't dig up the studies but if you consider the need to escape the security of the nuclear family and go out into a breeding group, a process which takes years in humans, then the tension between holding to the established rule structure of the family and attaching to new, risk-taking, attention-getting, highly romanticized identifications with peers (who are no more experienced than you are) makes sense. But it's dangerous and leads to all kinds of tragedies. That's one reason adolescence and young adulthood is a prime time for certain mental illnesses to manifest. The stressors are worse than they are in most other phases of life, and a whole lot of them are internal.

Keep guns locked up, and talk to them. And more importantly, LISTEN to them.

This comes as no surprise to one of my local school districts. Last school year, the student population was around 300 or so (graduating class is like a dozen or so). Four killed themselves within that school year. I actually cried and hugged the principal after I interviewed her about the phenomena (and I'm not much of a crier).

And everyone around here is opposed to single payer... go figure.

twice that I know of. Her group of friends are in a cycle where they dicuss suicide, act to commit (so far failing each time) then then affirm each other's worth in the hopes of averting another incident. I have limited contact with the outside world to school and supervised, time limited activities. Single payer would help if only there were actually somewhere close to enough pediatric psychiatrists. There are not. Further, after two ER trips both times we hoped she could go in for an inpatient 72 hour hold for observation and analysis we were told there were no available beds within a 100 mile radius from our home. Then we were instructed to take here home and keep an eye on her and checking with a doctor the next day. Professional mental health care is functionally non-existent for teens. In Northeast Wisconsin. If you know anybody considering a profession, supply and demand would dictate anyone entering the field of pediatric psychiatry could become rich in short order. There is an awful lot of unmet need out there right now.