Behavior: Could Suicide Be Contagious?

Cheerleaders wearing the school's gold-and-green colors led the emotional pep rally. More than a thousand pupils--almost the entire student body--assembled, many of them wearing paper hearts with the words CHOOSE LIFE. They hugged one another, cheered their athletic teams and sang We Are the World. The lyric "We're saving our own lives" understandably brought many to tears: the rally had been called to calm the student body after three youths at Bryan High School on the outskirts of Omaha committed suicide within five days.

The three knew one another only vaguely. They were ordinary youngsters with no apparent problems who lived in a predominantly Roman Catholic, blue-collar community. Michele Money, 16, described by friends as a positive, dependable person, had had problems with her boyfriend and talked about dropping out of school. She died of an overdose of Elavil, her mother's antidepressant. Mark Walpus, 15, was a popular, athletic youngster who had recently spent a lot of time by himself building a drill press. He shot himself in the chest. Tom Wacha, 18, a loner who planned to go to trade school, also shot himself. According to police, he had told a friend that he was "disgusted with life." In addition to these three, four other Bryan students tried to kill themselves in the past three weeks but failed.

The spree of self-destruction sent a shock wave through the school, which was locally branded "Suicide High." Counselors reported that some students dreaded going to class, fearing that another classmate would be dead. "Some of the youngsters are terribly upset and can't seem to control themselves," observed Guidance Counselor Nancy Bednar. "It's a sense of 'Who will be next?' " Teachers urged students to take a pledge not to make "any big decisions . . . without taking a day to think it over." At a forum on the suicides, parents and others shouted down Psychiatrist John Florian Riedler with such comments as "I once tried to commit suicide, years ago. No one ever tried to help me." Said Riedler: "Hysteria swept over this part of town last week."

The Omaha deaths raise an obvious question: Is suicide contagious? Recent clusters of adolescent suicides suggest that the answer is yes. In a twelve- month period beginning in February 1983, seven teenagers in Plano, Texas, committed suicide, four by carbon-monoxide poisoning, three by guns. Five boys in New York's Westchester and Putnam counties died by their own hand in February 1984, four of them by hanging. Within the past two weeks, one student at David Prouty High School in Spencer, Mass., committed suicide; at least two schoolmates, possibly four, tried to kill themselves and failed.

Researchers know very little about cluster suicides. Some may be merely coincidences; others may be self-dramatizing efforts to capture the same outpouring of sympathy that surrounded an earlier death. According to Dr. Mark Rosenberg of Atlanta's Centers for Disease Control, clusters probably occur "much more frequently than we find out about." Suicides generally tend to be underreported, he notes, in part because of concern about stigmatizing the deceased. Nonetheless, suicide is the third leading cause of death in - adolescents and young adults. In the 15-to-19-year age group, the suicide rate has almost tripled since 1958. However, since 1981, the rate has begun to level off.