'How to commit suicide' searches soar after Netflix's '13 Reasons Why'

Internet searches for 'how to commit suicide' spiked right after the release of Netflix's controversial series 13 Reasons Why, a show that depicts a teen girl who takes her own life, a study has found.

The season finale of the teen drama shows a 17-year-old student Hannah Baker committing suicide.

Researchers from San Diego State University in the US found that all suicide-related queries were 19 per cent higher than expected following the release of the finale episode.

Some of that bump came from a higher-than-expected number of searches for phrases like "suicide hotline" (up by 12 per cent) or "suicide prevention" (up by 23 per cent).

However, an alarming percentage of the spike also came from phrases like "how to commit suicide" (up by 26 per cent), "commit suicide" (up by 18 per cent) and "how to kill yourself" (up by nine per cent), researchers said.

"In relative terms, it is hard to appreciate the magnitude of the release of 13 Reasons Why. In fact, there were between 900,000 and 1.5 million more suicide-related searches than expected during the 19 days following the series' release," said Mark Dredze, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in the US.