Doctor-assisted suicide is contagious, too. Why aren't we sounding the alarm?

For decades, we’ve known that suicide is contagious and that how we talk about it matters. Now, we’re at least starting to see how crucial it is to honor the lives of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain without perseverating ghoulishly on how they died.

Though it’s no easy thing, we’ve got to find a way to destigmatize without normalizing and to eulogize without glamorizing. Depression is a liar, but we don’t have to be.

All kinds of hard, urgent conversations have followed Spade’s death, and soon after hers Bourdain’s. We’ve heard stories of survival that show suicide is in no way inevitable for those fighting an illness so pitiless that it fools many into thinking their loved ones would be fine, or better than fine, without them.

One aspect of this conversation that hasn’t been happening, though, and that will delight no one, involves the research that shows assisted suicide is also contagious.