"My favourite colour is red, like the blood shed from Kurl Cobain's head, when he shot himself dead . . . I tried suicide once and I'll try it again; that's why I write songs where I die in the end."
No prizes for guessing who is responsible for these less than uplifting rap lyrics.
Marshall Mathers, aka Slim Shady, aka Eminem, has been causing consternation among parents' groups in the United States since his obscenity-strewn brand of music broke into the pop market two years ago. Aside from objections on grounds on vulgarity, concern has been raised that the rapper's violent lyrics have prompted copycat incidents, including suicide.
"Listening to it, it's so vivid, it's horrible," says Dr Tony Byrne, a Holy Ghost priest and suicidology lecturer, describing Eminen's recent chart-topping release "Stan", in which a young man drives off a bridge with his pregnant girlfriend trapped in the boot. "You hear the sound of car hitting the waves. It's so vivid, animating, seductive almost."
Eminem and his defenders claim the lyrics are meant to be taken as irony. But Dr Byrne does not see it that way.
"We have to be really careful not to normalise suicide, or violent death. There are two categories of people who kill themselves, those engulfed in a sea of depression and those who do it because it's fashionable."
The link between suicide and its depiction or coverage in the media and on film is well established.
In the US, it has been estimated that one in five suicides are copycat in nature. In Germany, a TV series in which a young male student died by suicide on a railway line was blamed for causing a large increase in suicide by this method over the following 70 days. In a reverse case, newspapers in Vienna agreed in 1988 to stop covering subway suicides as part of voluntary reporting guidelines. The number of suicides on the underground fell.
The strength of this connection is open to debate, however, with some researchers arguing that graphic media coverage merely attracts people who are already considering suicide towards specific methods.
While there is a case for not discussing the issue at all, says Dr John F. Connolly of the Irish Association of Suicidology, "I would come down on the side that education is very important. We have a duty to cover it."
In an effort to minimise any damage from such reporting, the IAS and the Samaritans last year published media guidelines. These stressed that suicide should not be presented as a dignified or courageous act. Nor should the media give explicit or technical details of how a suicide was carried out.
Phrases like "committing" suicide, given its criminal connotations, and "a successful suicide attempt" are deemed inappropriate. Media workers are also urged to highlight the traumatic impact of suicide on family members and other people. Similar guidelines are due to be introduced by the National Union of Journalists this year.
According to Dr Byrne, the greatest concern relates to the coverage of pop stars and other celebrities who die by suicide. "When I ask young people who their role models are they often name people who have either died by suicide or sing about it."
He cites a recent case in a girls' school where pupils were asked to write to a classmate who had died by suicide as part of their grieving process. "In their letters, most of the students told the deceased girl that they admired her for killing herself and said that they hoped they would have the courage to do the same.
"Unfortunately it's in the air. It's in the textbooks, like Romeo and Juliet. You really are up against it in trying to stop suicide being normalised, sanitised and sensationalised."
