Sub genres of Suicide

Mass Suicide

Suicide is often committed out of despair or some underlying mental disorder but can sometimes be committed due to peer group trends. This type of suicide is done under peer pressure when people kill themselves for the same reason. Mass suicide sometimes occurs in religious or cultic settings. Cult’s, being a group whose beliefs or practices are considered strange, have been known to commit group suicide for different reasons with different beliefs. Some cult groups have committed mass suicides and have various beliefs that their “human” bodies were only vessels meant to help them on their journeys, such as a very popular religious groups called Heaven’s Gate, Order of the Solar Temple, and Peoples Temple. Most of these groups encouraged and praised this type of death as “revolutionary suicide”. Another kind of mass suicide are suicide attacks which are committed for political or military reasons. Mainly demonstrated by terrorists, this type of suicide is considered “honorable” in some societies. One of the biggest suicide attack in history was September 11th (nine eleven) where a series of coordinated suicide plans took place killing over 2,752 victims at the World Trade Center in New York City. Another sub genre of mass suicide is  called pact suicide, a dangerous trend that is most popular in teens. Suicide pacts usually involve small groups of people whose suicidal motivations are intensely personal and  individual or are very ideological. The frightening part about some suicide pacts is that they have been known to set out a domino effect and can even be influenced over the internet. This effect most commonly occurring in teens, happens when a small group of teenagers make a suicide pact for various reasons to kill themselves, and then another group of teenagers will hear about it and follow suit. It creates a domino effect of deaths that is very hard to stop unless you can stop it from the inside. Nowadays more and more people are aware of this domino effect method and have taken precautions to stop other people from making suicide pacts in trends. Mass suicides have been noted all throughout history from the 960 members of the Sicarii Jewish community at Masada, who collectively committed suicide in AD 73, rather than be conquered and enslaved by the Romans, to the Heaven’s Gate cult in 1997 where 39 members committed suicide in order to reach the “next plane of existence” rather than dying with the Earth that they believed was on the brink of extinction in a recycling process. Mass suicide has been influenced by broader cultural views on existential themes such as religion, honor, and the meaning of life. Whether it be mass suicide, pact suicide or mental disorder induced suicides over one million people commit suicide every year.