He talks of a South Pacific island
Micronesia where a seventeen year old boy got into an argument with his father,
father told him to get out of the house and he then committed suicide. For an
island where suicide was unknown in 1960s, by the end of 1980s there were more
suicides per capita in Micronesia than anywhere else in the world.
The book says - The central
observation of those who study suicide is that in some places and under some
circumstances, the act of one person taking his or her own life can be
contagious. Suicides lead to suicides. Thus as suicide grows more frequent in
these communities the idea itself acquires a certain familiarity if not fascination
(to young men in the case of Micronesia) and the lethality of the act seems to
be trivialized. Especially among some younger boys, the suicide act appears to
have acquired an experimental almost recreational element”
It concludes with - AN ACT THAT
HAS BECOME AN IMPORTANT FORM OF SELF EXPRESSION” – people who die in highly
publicized suicides – whose deaths give others “permission to die” serve as the
Tipping Points in suicide epidemics.