ABSTRACT
An important feature of echoing self-harmful contagion is the diversity of behaviours this term covers. In addition to the traditionally accepted clustering of suicide, this chapter notes contagion involving self-harm and self-starvation. Importantly, online communities that support these behaviours do not draw strong definitions between them and see any kind of self-injury as essentially the same. This is not an unreasonable stance, as similar processes of social learning can indeed be observed, and clustering appears to happen in comparable ways. More immediate point clustering can be observed amongst friendship groups where people, especially teenagers, are inspired to lose excessive weight by their friends, or to take part in competitive activities like making the deepest self-inflicted cuts. More broadly, school communities can also foster clustering of self-harmful actions in a similar way. There is also clear evidence that celebrity culture can cause mass clustering across groups, with media such as magazines inspiring actions like severe food restriction that is adopted by vulnerable people across their readership. The internet has now allowed content from magazines to be accessed well beyond print run, or to allow young people to connect with a global network of peers. This means that any clustering behaviour can echo further than was traditional before this platform existed.
