Suicidal models - Their frequency and role in suicide attempters, non-suicidal psychiatric patients and normal control cases: A comparative German-Hungarian study

Increasing evidence suggests that imitative behavior may have a role in suicide. The social transmission of this problem-solving strategy might be explained by the influence of modeling. The authors investigated suicide attempters, psychiatric patients without suicidal history as well as control groups of normal persons without a psychiatric or suicidal history matched for sociodemographic variables in Germany and Hungary. Using a structured questionnaire the occurrence of real and fictive suicidal models was investigated. Statistical analyses were performed to compare the frequency of suicidal models, the characteristics of the suicidal act, and the role of imitation of the different groups in each country. The differences between the German and Hungarian groups were explained according to different cultural factors and different learning histories.