A Land of Teenage Tragedy One Year, One County, 17 Suicides . . . Torcuil Crichton Reports On the 'Bridgend Phenomenon'

Summary

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SCIENTISTS call it Active Network Theory the investigation into the universal laws and calculations of networks and their outcomes. There is a branch of the discipline that looks into how people interact with each other and the Welsh town of Bridgend has undoubtedly become a model worth studying.

"The way the public, the television, press and official facilities have all interacted has created a phenomenon that has gone beyond suicide, " says Phil Jones, a research fellow at Swansea University. "The phenomenon is now Bridgend and that is beginning to affect everyone involved." Whatever is happening in Bridgend and the wider county of Mid Glamorgan has taken scientists, the police, the internet and the press by storm.

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A Land of Teenage Tragedy One Year, One County, 17 Suicides . . . Torcuil Crichton Reports On the 'Bridgend Phenomenon'

Last Tuesday, teenager Jenna Parry became the 17th young person in the area to take her own life since January 2007.

Jenna's death came just days after two cousins died, apparently having taken their own lives. Kelly Stephenson, who was 20, was found dead in a bathroom during a family holiday just hours after learning her 15-year-old cousin, Nathaniel Pritchard, had killed himself. The two lived a few doors away from each other in Bridgend. Their deaths became suicides 15 and 16 on the peppered map of the county.

Jenna's suicide was completely unexpected by frien...

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