Copycat suicides are defined as those duplications of suicides due to repeated accounts or depictions of the original suicide on television and in othe rmedia. The well-publicized suicide serves as a model, in the absence of protective factors, to the next suicide. They occasionally spread, like wildfire, through a school system, through a community, or in terms of a celebrity suicide wave, nationally.
In the book, Suicide Clusters (Boston/London?: Faber and Faber, 1987), by Loren Coleman, many specific examples of copycat suicides are given.