In Mozart’s »The Magic Flute«, the desperate Papageno wants to take his own life. But when three children show him another way, he changes his mind. Can people who are weary of life draw new hope from media reports? A research group from the Medical University of Vienna came up with this idea when they were looking for a connection between media reports and suicide statistics in Austria, and launched the Papageno effect in 2010. So far, however, it has only been proven in a few studies.
Now one of the Vienna group, Thomas Niederkrotenthaler, and an international team have re-evaluated eight studies that have experimentally examined such media reports and their effects with more than 2,300 test subjects. The meta-analysis actually revealed a small effect, as the researchers report: the suicidal thoughts decreased. “Stories about people who were able to successfully cope with their suicidal crises can cause a decrease in suicidality,” wrote Niederkrotenthaler and his colleague Benedikt Til back in 2019 about the current state of research.
However, it has not been fully clarified what the psychological basis of the effect is and what kind of article contributes to it. Apparently, there is no need for reports from those affected. In a 2018 experiment, a team led by Till and Niederkrotenthaler asked more than 500 adults to read a newspaper article in which an expert explained ways to prevent suicide. In one test condition, she also related how she herself had overcome a suicidal crisis as a teenager; in another variant it did not. In both cases, the subjects reported fewer suicidal thoughts than a control group who had read an interview about a different health topic. The enlightenment apparently worked with and without a personal report.