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Teenage "chatroom" suicides shock Britain
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 24 - 01 - 2008

First-year college student Natasha Randall was much
liked by her friends, seemed happy and was not on drugs, according to dpa.
A week ago, the 17-year-old hanged herself in her bedroom in what
police believe to be a chain of "copycat suicides" fuelled by the
desire to become "tragic heroes" on the internet.
Natasha was the first girl to die in a series of seven apparently
unexplained suicides of youngsters that has alarmed parents, the
health authorities and the police in Bridgend, a small town of 2,000
people in Wales, western Britain.
In the 12 months before Natasha's death, six young men, aged
between 18 and 27, from Bridgend and the surrounding area, had killed
themselves. Most were known to each other.
Earlier in January, Natasha had attended the funeral of her friend
Liam Clarke, 20, who was found hanged in a local park over Christmas.
Natasha, using the web name "Wildchild," had left a tribute to
Liam on a message page created for him on Bebo, a social networking
site popular with youngsters.
"Rest in peace, Clarky boy!! gonna miss ya! always remember the gd
times!," she wrote.
A "memorial page" created for Natasha carries the entries: "Sleep
tight, princess" and "Sweet dreams, angel."
"Tasha would talk about hanging a lot. She was fascinated by it.
Suicide had become a cool thing in our area," Annie-Marie Eagle,
Natasha's 17-year-old friend, told the Sun newspaper Thursday.
The parents of the youngsters have been telling newspapers that,
even worse than their grief was "not knowing why" their children took
their lives.
South Wales police, who are investigating Natasha's computer,
believe that the explanation for her death could lie in what experts
describe as a search for "virtual immortality."
"They (young people) may think it's cool to have a memorial
website. It may even be a way of achieving prestige among their peer
group," one officer told the Times newspaper.
However, social researchers believe that the known connection
between suicide reports in the media and copycat deaths would have an
"even more direct impact" on young people using teenage chatrooms on
the internet.
"In bedrooms all over the western world, children and adults are
isolated from reality, worshipping the altar of the internet," the
Daily Mail said Thursday.
From being ordinary children with problems and all the angst of
growing up, children came to believe that death could make them
"tragic heroes," the paper commented.
"It's like the first person who commits suicide becomes a sort of
role model for those who follow," US psychologist Madelyn Gould of
Columbia University told the BBC Thursday.
She urged parents to "address these issues honestly" with their
children and "above all not to ignore it's going on."


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