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  3. Association of Logic’s hip hop song “1-800-273-8255” with Lifeline calls and suicides in the United States: interrupted time series analysis
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Research Christmas 2021: What a Wonderful World

Association of Logic’s hip hop song “1-800-273-8255” with Lifeline calls and suicides in the United States: interrupted time series analysis

BMJ 2021; 375 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2021-067726 (Published 13 December 2021) Cite this as: BMJ 2021;375:e067726

Linked Editorial

A song of hope
  1. Thomas Niederkrotenthaler, associate professor1 2,
  2. Ulrich S Tran, senior lecturer2 3,
  3. Madelyn Gould, professor4,
  4. Mark Sinyor, associate professor5 6,
  5. Steven Sumner, senior researcher7,
  6. Markus J Strauss, data scientist1,
  7. Martin Voracek, professor2 3,
  8. Benedikt Till, associate professor1 2,
  9. Sean Murphy, senior data scientist8,
  10. Frances Gonzalez, senior communications director8,
  11. Matthew J Spittal, associate professor9,
  12. John Draper, executive director8
  1. 1Unit Suicide Research & Mental Health Promotion, Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Center for Public Health, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
  2. 2Wiener Werkstaette for Suicide Research, Vienna, Austria
  3. 3Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
  4. 4New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
  5. 5Department of Psychiatry, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Canada
  6. 6Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Canada
  7. 7National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, GA, USA
  8. 8National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, Vibrant Emotional Health, New York, NY, USA
  9. 9Centre for Mental Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
  1. Correspondence to: T Niederkrotenthaler thomas.niederkrotenthaler{at}meduniwien.ac.at
  • Accepted 4 November 2021

Abstract

Objective To assess changes in daily call volumes to the US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and in suicides during periods of wide scale public attention to the song “1-800-273-8255” by American hip hop artist Logic.

Design Time series analysis.

Setting United States, 1 January 2010 to 31 December 2018.

Participants Total US population. Lifeline calls and suicide data were obtained from Lifeline and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Main outcome measures Daily Lifeline calls and suicide data before and after the release of the song. Twitter posts were used to estimate the amount and duration of attention the song received. Seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average time series models were fitted to the pre-release period to estimate Lifeline calls and suicides. Models were fitted to the full time series with dummy variables for periods of strong attention to the song.

Results In the 34 day period after the three events with the strongest public attention (the song’s release, the MTV Video Music Awards 2017, and Grammy Awards 2018), Lifeline received an excess of 9915 calls (95% confidence interval 6594 to 13 236), an increase of 6.9% (95% confidence interval 4.6% to 9.2%, P<0.001) over the expected number. A corresponding model for suicides indicated a reduction over the same period of 245 suicides (95% confidence interval 36 to 453) or 5.5% (95% confidence interval 0.8% to 10.1%, P=0.02) below the expected number of suicides.

Conclusions Logic’s song “1-800-273-8255” was associated with a large increase in calls to Lifeline. A reduction in suicides was observed in the periods with the most social media discourse about the song.

Footnotes

  • Contributors: TN, UST, and SS had full access to all data in the study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. TN and UST conceived and designed the study, drafted the manuscript, and performed the statistical analysis. All authors acquired, analysed, or interpreted the data and critically revised the manuscript for important intellectual content. MJStrauss was responsible for conceptualising and making the figures. The corresponding author attests that all listed authors meet authorship criteria and that no others meeting the criterial have been omitted. TN and UST are guarantors.

  • Funding: No specific funding. MJ Spittal is recipient of an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (project No FT180100075) funded by the Australian government. This funding source had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

  • Competing interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at http://www.icmje.org/disclosure-of-interest/ and declare: MG, TN, and BT had financial support from Vibrant Emotional Health for not directly related work in the same area, which was the basis for development of this research project; MS reports a grant from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (grant No SRG-0-153-19) for not directly related work in the same area in the past three years; SM, FG, and JD have been employees of Vibrant Emotional Health, the non-profit organisation that administers the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and is funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, USA, in the past three years; BT reports consulting fees in the past three years from Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (SAVE) for not directly related work in the same area; MG reports membership in the Steering and Standards, Training and Practices committees of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline; TN reports being a current board member of the International Association for Suicide Prevention as vice president.

  • Dissemination to participants and related patient and public communities: The study findings will be broadly disseminated via public media, conference presentations, press releases, and social media. We will work with the communications team of Vibrant Emotional Health (specifically, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline) to achieve this goal. The authors will also disseminate findings to media organizations and press councils, as well as to national and international health organizations that have been instrumental in the development of media recommendations for suicide reporting. How the findings will be used to the benefit of the community will be discussed in interdisciplinary groups involved in media portrayals of suicides, which includes media professionals, the interested public, individuals with personal experience of suicidal thoughts and feelings, suicide attempts, and bereavement from suicide, as well as mental health professionals.

  • Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

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