"The time is right and you’re ready, you just need to do it!” This was one of the many text messages that Michelle Carter, 17, sent to her boyfriend, Conrad Roy III, 18, encouraging him to take his own life in 2014 (Commonwealth v. Carter, 2016).
In hundreds of text exchanges in the days before his death on July 13 in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, Carter pressured Roy to go through with his plan to die by suicide, at times providing instruction on how to carry it out and chastising him for his indecision and failure to act.
When Roy, who had a history of depression, expressed concerns about how his family would react to his death, Carter assured him that they would “understand and accept it.” And just before his death, as Roy had second thoughts about his decision to end his life, Carter urged him to carry through with the plan.
Carter, who herself struggled with an eating disorder and suicidal thoughts, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for the reckless and coercive behavior that led to Roy’s death. She is serving a 15-month jail term after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which considered her words to be “speech integral to criminal conduct,” upheld her conviction.
Carter’s attorneys have now petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take up her case, arguing that she was roughly an hour away from Roy at the time of his death and did not physically participate in his suicide.
They argue that convicting Carter based on her words alone violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment. Moreover, Carter’s attorneys argue that her case presents an opportunity for the court to clarify what types of speech are considered unprotected, and to establish meaningful guidelines and set precedent in assisted suicide cases. Many also consider this case an opportunity for the court to weigh in on the growing problem of cyberbullying.
But how much can words actually influence someone who may be suicidal? Several studies have found that exposure to suicidal behavior within one’s close social network can increase the “suggestibility” of suicide. For example, Abrutyn and Mueller1 found that suicide attempts of role models were associated with suicidal thoughts—and in certain instances, attempts—in a sample of American adolescents. The potential psychological mechanisms underlying this impressionability, including social learning, imitation and emotional contagion, are not well understood in relation to suicide facilitation via explicit encouragement.
While the success of suicide crisis hotlines suggests that emotional support can discourage suicidal behavior and produce positive mental health outcomes (such as reduction of suicidal and self-harm ideation2,3 and increased hopefulness3), the role that encouragement plays in producing negative outcomes is less understood. Despite the obvious ethical hurdles, assessing the extent to which explicit encouragement of suicide results in actual or attempted suicidal behavior is an important area for future research.
