The Bridgend suicide incidents were a set of at least 26 suicides involving young people in

Bridgend County Borough Bridgend County Borough ( cy, Bwrdeistref Sirol Pen-y-bont ar Ogwr) is a county borough in the south-east of Wales. The county borough has a total population of 139,200 people, and contains the town of Bridgend, after which it is named. I ...

in South Wales in 2007 and 2008.Telegraph.co.uk
- "Teenage boy from Bridgend found hanged in latest suspected suicide" Reports speculated that a "suicide cult" was to blame, though police found no evidence to link the cases together. Of the suicides, all but one died from

hanging Hanging is the suspension of a person by a noose or ligature around the neck.Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Hanging as method of execution is unknown, as method of suicide from 1325. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' states that hanging ...

. Many of the suicides were teenagers between the ages of 13 to 17. The parents of one of the dead accused the media of "glamorising ways of taking one's life to young people". Madeleine Moon,

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...

for

Bridgend Bridgend (; cy, Pen-y-bont ar Ogwr or just , meaning "the end of the bridge on the Ogmore") is a town in Bridgend County Borough in Wales, west of Cardiff and east of Swansea. The town is named after the medieval bridge over the River Og ...

said that the media were "now part of the problem". The mother of one of the deceased added: "We have lost our son and the media reporting of this has made it more unbearable". In the years between 1996 and 2006, an average of three men ended their own lives in Bridgend every year. In 2007, the total was believed to be at least nine. On 12 January 2010, it was reported that another two people had died by suicide in the town. In 2010 police asked the media to stop covering the suicides in an attempt to prevent

copycat suicide A copycat suicide is defined as an emulation of another suicide that the person attempting suicide knows about either from local knowledge or due to accounts or depictions of the original suicide on television and in other media. The publicized ...

s. Bridgend is a former market town of around 39,000 people; however, the suicides stretched over the whole county borough of Bridgend, which has a population of over 130,000. The

Office of National Statistics An office is a space where an organization's employees perform administrative work in order to support and realize objects and goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific du ...

reports that the rate of suicides, averaged across England and Wales in 2010, was 11.1 per 100,000 people per year, with Wales and the North East of England having the highest suicide rates at 14.6 and 13.2 per 100,000 respectively. A 2013 documentary and a 2015 drama film were made about these incidents, both called ''Bridgend''. The 2015 film was viewed in Wales as sensationalist, exploitative and lacking in truth, in that it showed local youths screaming out to their dead friends in the misty woods, skinny dipping en masse and revelling in regular

underage drinking The legal drinking age is the minimum age at which a person can legally consume alcoholic beverages. The minimum age alcohol can be legally consumed can be different from the age when it can be purchased in some countries. These laws vary between ...

References

{{reflist Bridgend County Borough Suicides in Wales