“Suicide stories are a kind of natural advertisement for a particular response to your problems,” Phillips continues. “You’ve got all these people who are unhappy and have difficulty making up their minds because they are depressed. They are living with this pain. There are lots of stories advertising different kinds of responses to that. It could be that Billy Graham has a crusade going on that weekend—that’s a religious response. Or it could be that somebody is advertising an escapist movie—that’s another response. Suicide stories offer another kind of alternative.”
