Google Trends and Google Insights are tools that allow you to compare search topics and see what people are searching for
Dateline Franklin (Vocus) January 19, 2010
Lee Eric Drake Foundation Director, Kelly Bush, found startling results in Google’s search trends when doing online research for their upcoming Records for Awareness program, billed as an extreme fundraising program. “Google Trends and Google Insights are tools that allow you to compare search topics and see what people are searching for,” Bush said. “I never thought I’d see the results I did when I first began this search.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control, in the United States alone, more than 33,000 people a year take their own lives. That is approximately 91 people each day, 1 person every 16 minutes, who end their lives by their own hands. On further note, of the 33,000 suicides in this country each year, 20% of them are acts by veterans.
While looking for keyword terms used by Americans in Google searches, Bush identified five troubling terms used on a daily basis: painless suicide, suicide methods, how to kill yourself, how to commit suicide, and ways to suicide. Those five search terms bring in 3600, 2000, 1600, 1600, and 900 searches a day respectively. “Now, I realize that these keyword phrases don’t account for a lot of searches everyday in Google’s grand total but that’s a lot of people looking daily for information about ending their life.” Bush went on to say, “However, it wasn’t until I came across the keyword phrase ‘suicidal thoughts’ that I began to get worried.”
Of the billions of searches that Americans perform everyday on Google, Bush found that the phrase “suicidal thoughts” is searched approximately 5500 times a day, roughly 2 million times a year. “It wasn’t the number of searches that caught my eye. It was the increase over time that bothered me,” Bush explained.
What Bush found was a 488% growth relative to the Health category, from January 2004 until January 2010, in the keyword phrase “suicidal thoughts”. “That’s a staggering result! To think that Americans have increasing consideration about suicidal thoughts on that scale is amazing and disheartening at the same time.” Bush added, “You can clearly see the apparent rise in the trend starts around the economic crisis in 2008 and in just the last 6 months alone there’s been an increase of 323%.”
Bush and other friends and family members put together the Lee Eric Drake Foundation for Suicide Prevention in honor of Drake, who suffered depression and, in 2005 and at the age of 24, committed suicide. The foundation’s mission is to help facilitate mental health training and education while promoting the overall cause of reducing suicide statistics.
“It’s a difficult road ahead, but with education and support,” Bush said, “the Lee Eric Drake Foundation hopes to be able to save the next Drake before it’s too late. We believe suicide awareness is the key.”
To learn more about Lee Eric Drake and the foundation created to carry on Eric’s legacy, visit http://www.LeeEricDrake.com.
About the Lee Eric Drake Foundation
Created as a way to honor the memory of a truly remarkable individual, the non-profit Lee Eric Drake Foundation’s focus is on raising awareness, and raising money for graduate scholarships designed to encourage post-graduate studies in the mental health field. In just the past year, generous donations have helped the Foundation award four scholarships.
Contact:
Kelly Bush
400 South Railroad Street
Franklin, KY
213-537-2874
http://www.LeeEricDrake.com
WalkAcrossAmerica.us.com
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