Responsible Reporting Is Vital In Media Coverage Of Suicide

Exactly how the media discusses suicide is a topic of frequent debate. Plenty of research has linked media reporting  of suicide with an increase in suicidal behaviour, and both the Samaritans and the World Health Organization (WHO), amongst others, have clear (and frequently promoted) guides for journalists on how to report suicide. But such guidelines are often ignored in favour of insensitivity or sensationalism — especially when the person at hand is a celebrity. Take the recent coverage of the death of Caroline Flack: explicit, deeply intimate details were plastered across tabloids for weeks, with seemingly no thought for how those details would impact readers. Now a new review, published in the British Medical Journal, has taken a closer look at just how serious the problem is. The analysis included 20 studies which looked at the rate of suicides amongst the general population before and after the media had reported on suicide in print, online, or on TV. Of these, 14 studies looked at reports specifically on the death of a celebrity by suicide. As expected, the studies found an increase in suicides during the period after the reporting of a death of a celebrity; in cases where the method was detailed, there was also an increase in the number of suicides by that same method. On average, reports of celebrity deaths by suicide were associated with an 8 to 18% increase in suicide rates in the general population, with estimates on the higher end of the scale when the cel...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Media Mental health Suicide/ self-harm Source Type: blogs