TKOP Exclusive: Suicide Rate for Reality Contestants Three Times the National Average
It’s starting to look like reality TV shows should come with a Surgeon General’s warning.
Recent suicides Mark Balelo, an auction house owner featured on the reality TV show Storage Wars, and Mindy McCready, a country singer who appeared on Celebrity Rehab, now bring the number of former reality TV show contestants in the U.S. who have died at their own hand to 14. And I’m only counting the suicides since 2005.
The national average rate for suicides is 12.4 per 100,000 people, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. You don’t have to be Nate Silver to look at these numbers and wonder whether the reality TV suicide rate is higher than the national average.
Unfortunately, it seems like you do have to be Nate Silver to dig up the data to prove it. None of the TV data companies I contacted—Tribune Media Services, Baseline, Rovi, IMDB—were able to provide data on how many reality shows have aired since 2005 or how many contestants have appeared on those shows during that time.
So I decided to do my own back-of-the-envelope calculation. I took the 14 shows connected with suicide victims and counted the number of contestants that appeared on them in one year. Then I divided by 14 to get the average number of contestants for the “suicide series” shows: 30. Considering that Supernanny and American Idol had well over 100 contestants (and failed auditions), while The Next Great Baker had 8 (9 if you count the host) and Celebrity Rehab had 8 (18 if you count all the shrinks), 30 seemed like a pretty generous number.
Next, I consulted RealityTVWorld.com, which bills itself as “the Internet’s leading resource for reality television news and information.” The site lists 1,136 shows, including all 22 seasons of The Amazing Race, 12 seasons of American Idol, and even a listing for something called America’s Next Muppet, a six-episode mini-series that never aired.
Now, I took all 1,136 of the shows, a number that includes the aforementioned unmade Muppet show and also includes shows that aired before 2005, and I multiplied by an average of 30 contestants to get 34,080.
If we agree that this number–34,080–is a good faith guesstimate of how many reality TV contestants have appeared since 2005, then things do not look good for the well-being of your average reality show contestant.
14 out of 34,080 reality TV contestants is vastly higher suicide rate than 12.4 out of 100,000 Americans.
In fact, it appears to be more than three times the national average.
What does this disturbing statistic mean?
One web site that has done a good job of tracking reality TV deaths, Tamaratattles.com, reports that four of the contestants who had committed suicide were voted out during episode four of their series. Tamara’s conclusion: “What we have learned here is don’t go on a reality show. And if you do, try like hell not to be voted off in the fourth episode!”
When I studied the list, I was dismayed to see that a show as comparatively well-intentioned as Supernanny had a parent among the departed. For the uninitiated, the Supernanny teaches parents basic behavior modification skills to apply to their kids–be firm and consistent, dammit—while allowing viewers to watch one domestic train wreck after another. As reality shows go, it offers some unseemly family portraits, but it definitely has redeeming qualities.
Single dad James Terrill killed himself six months after appearing on Supernanny. Was his appearance on the show a factor in his death? Impossible to know.
But Terrill’s death, like all these TV suicides, is part of a preponderance of evidence that suggests the scars and wounds arising from this kind of exposure are not good for your mental health, your self-esteem, and ultimately your life.
But wait, you say. You’re sure that Kelly Clarkson, the first American Idol winner and a Grammy-winning sweetheart, would disagree. I’m sure, too. And doubtless there are others who have found their experience empowering or a great career move. And yes, we can’t blame the shows themselves for a few tragic decisions by a few cast members who just couldn’t handle the world.
Or can we?
Winners are the exception in reality TV. The odds are stacked that you will get voted off the island, Randy will diss your stage presence and the next day America will agree, or Heidi Klum will dress down your dress and tell you “You’re out.” Not exactly the best set-up for a confidence-building experience.
As Jackass and Jerry Springer have proven, there’s a pretty big audience for good, clean pain and humiliation. TV producers know this. Even the “best” reality shows offer their fair share of carefully calculated and edited “enter-pain-ment.”
How that pain is processed and internalized by contestants can’t be edited in post-production. And so, in this year of ridiculous programming, while we wait for a sociologist or data-loving blogger to confirm my unofficial data, let’s offer some predictions:
Eventually another contestant is going to snap, either on-screen or off, with tragic results. This is still the gun-happy land of America. It’s going to happen.
When it does—no matter if it’s a suicide or something much, much worse– the shows will have an out. They require all contestants to indemnify the producers from any personal mishaps. But that won’t protect them from coming under heavy criticism for the cynical, stress-inducing frameworks of their shows, and so the genre will be forced to take a harsh look at itself
Expect major hand-wringing. And denial of responsibility. And still more suicides. And more and more envelope-pushing series.
