Suicide shown live online brings concerns, reminders
Mental healthFriends, family members often miss common warning signs

BY Heather Warlick

Published: December 2, 2008

About a week before Thanksgiving, Abraham Biggs Jr. of Broward County, Fla., turned on his computer’s webcam and swallowed a lethal dose of prescription pills. From his bedroom, Biggs, 19, broadcast a live feed of his suicide, which an estimated 1,300 people watched.

This photo of Abraham Biggs Jr. is from his Myspace page.

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Biggs had threatened suicide in online chat rooms for weeks before his suicide, authorities said. His suicide has prompted a virtual storm of commentary on whether viewers should have done more to get him help.

His father, Abraham Biggs Sr., believes the moderators of Justin.tv, the site on which the macabre webcast played out, and those watching share partial responsibility for his son’s Nov. 19 death.

"I think they are all equally wrong,” he told an Associated Press reporter. "It’s a person’s life that we’re talking about. And as a human being, you don’t watch someone in trouble and sit back and just watch.”

Jessica Hawkins, prevention services director for the state Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services Department, agrees.

"That was his cry for help,” she said. "When somebody threatens suicide, we have to take it seriously.”

Biggs’ father said suicide was completely out of character for his son and that he saw no warning signs. But Hawkins said most people considering suicide show common warning signs that family and friends often miss.

Nationally, suicide is the third-highest cause of death among people ages 10 to 24. But in Oklahoma, suicide is the second-highest cause of death for that demographic, behind unintentional injuries.

According to the most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey (2005), 15 percent of high school students have seriously considered suicide, and 12 percent have formulated a plan to carry out their own suicide.

"Not all young people who die by suicide or attempt suicide are clinically depressed at the time of their suicide,” Hawkins said. But there is a strong relationship between mental illnesses and suicide, she said.

Impulsivity, she said, can be a factor in youth that, combined with easy access to lethal means such as a firearm or prescription pills, can have deadly consequences.

According to the state Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services Department, someone commits suicide every day in Oklahoma.

"Suicide, to the person who’s attempting it, is really not about dying. It’s about ending pain,” Hawkins said. But suicide, she said, is never a rational solution for pain.