Kids Imitate Saddam's Televised Hanging Death

Jan. 5, 2007— -- Sergio Pelico, a 10-year-old boy from Webster, Texas, hanged himself from a bunk bed last Sunday.

On that same day, a 9-year-old Pakistani boy, Mubashar Ali, hanged himself, with help from his 10-year-old sister.

And three days later, in the suburbs of Kolkata, India, 15-year-old Moon Moon Karmarkar hanged herself from a ceiling fan.

Other than their tragic nature, the suicides of these children shared another link -- each of the young victims had viewed the execution video of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein on television.

The incidents shed light on the potential impact of violent scenes on young minds. Child and adolescent psychologists say watching events like this can have a significant and direct influence on children's behavior.

"When children see frightening, scary and aggressive scenes, such as hangings and school shootings, some will turn away," says Nadine Kaslow, chief psychologist at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta and a professor at Emory University's School of Medicine. "Others will become obsessed or try and imitate what they are seeing."

The idea that children tend to imitate what they watch on television is not new. In 2001, the American Academy of Pediatrics formed a Committee on Public Education to study the effects of media violence.

What the committee found through an extensive review of research was that violent acts and images in the media could contribute to imitation of aggressive behavior.

But recent events suggest that this link between seeing violence and imitating it may be stronger than many parents imagine.

"Social learning theory may be a good place to start when trying to understand behaviors which imitate something that has already happened," says Jeffrey Brown, instructor in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital.

"The theory suggests that individuals, particularly kids, learn new behaviors quite easily by observing them."