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Saving Lives in New York Volume 2: Approaches and Special Populations can also highlight opportunities to prevent suicide. Media stories about individual deaths by suicide may be newsworthy and need to be covered, but they also have the potential to do harm. Implementation of recommendations for media coverage of suicides has been shown to decrease suicide rates. Unfortunately, many media practices can have negative effects on the public: 1. Certain ways of describing suicide in the news contribute to what is called “suicide contagion” or “copycat suicides.” This is especially potent within the adolescent population. (See Chapter on Adolescents for more information) 2. Research suggests that inadvertently romanticizing suicide or idealizing those who take their own lives by portraying suicide as a heroic or romantic act may encourage others to identify with the victim. 3. Exposure to suicide method through media reports can encourage vulnerable individuals to imitate it. Clinicians warn the danger is even greater if there is a detailed description of the method. Research indicates that pictures or other detailed information of the site of a suicide also encourages imitation. 4. Presenting suicide as the inexplicable act of an otherwise healthy or highachieving person may encourage identification with the victim, and engender a “copycat behavior.” 5. The media should know that 90% of suicide victims have a significant psychiatric illness at their time of death. These are often undiagnosed, untreated, or both. Mood disorders and substance abuse are the two most common diagnoses. 6. When both mood disorders and substance abuse are present, the risk for suicide is much greater, especially for adolescents and young adults. 7. Research has shown that when open aggression, anxiety or agitation is present in individuals who are depressed, the risk for suicide increases significantly. 8. The cause of an individual suicide is typically more complicated than a recent painful event, such as a breakup of a relationship or the loss of a job. Social conditions alone do not explain a suicide. 9. People who appear to become suicidal in response to such events, or in response to a physical illness, generally have significant mental problems, though they may be well-hidden. II. Action Steps for Working with the Media 1. If you don’t know what good and bad examples of how the media reports on suicide are, educate yourself. Read the Annenberg Report and go to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s web site for current examples (www.afsp.org). 2. Once you understand the issues and have some examples to back yourself up, tell others. Helping the media understand the issue and educating them about how they might do a better job is a concrete way that you can bring about change. 3. Reach out to the news and health editors at your local newspapers – big or small – and at your local broadcast newsrooms. Often a suicide in a specific neighborhood or borough is reported in the neighborhood paper and not the major paper. If you live in a college town, get in touch with the editor of the student newspaper or student-run radio and television station: young adults need this information as well. 4. Get phone, fax and e-mail contact information for these individuals, but open your communication with something written: a letter, fax or e-mail that explains who you are and why you 14 Media
Saving Lives in New York Volume 2: Approaches and Special Populations care about suicide prevention (and its coverage). If you can help your reader understand why you are writing and that you are truly invested in suicide prevention, they will take you more seriously. Include a copy of Reporting on Suicide with your letter. 5. Offer to meet with editors, reporters and copy editors at your local media outlets. Each of these groups plays a key role in how the media represents suicide: the editor by assigning the story to a reporter, a reporter by telling that story and a copy editor by writing the headline and photo captions for that story. 6. Maintain ongoing communication and dialogue with your local news agencies. Let them know you are available to consult as an “expert” or that you can help them get the information they need when reporting on a suicide. Keep them abreast of mental health and suicide related legislative news at the state and federal levels. 7. In addition to working with your local media outlets, get in touch with professors at the local university or community college. Offer to speak to journalism classes or at schools of communications. We need to educate today’s students before they begin working as professional journalists. 8. If you find examples of “bad” reporting in your local news outlets, let them know in a calm, intelligent, educational manner. Refer them to the Annenberg Report. Help them to understand where they went wrong and how they could have done better without alienating them. Provide examples of how they could have done better and make yourself available for ongoing communication about the issue. 9. If you find examples of “good” reporting....praise them. Many mental health associations, including the National Mental Health Association, offer media awards for positive representations of mental health in the press and fictional media. If it’s very good, nominate it for an award. 10. Use the media to educate your local community by asking local health editors to assign stories about depression and mental illness at any time of the year, but specifically when a suicide occurs in your community. Stories about warning signs for suicide, stories that profile local organizations or individuals who work in suicide prevention, and stories about mental health and suicide related legislation can all be effective uses of media to de-stigmatize mental health, educate the public and, ultimately, combat suicide. If information about warning signs and prevention is presented along side a story about a local suicide your community will learn something from the tragedy. 11. If a local mental health organization is having a rally or educational event, invite the media. This is a great opportunity to educate them and to provide them with “content” for a story. 12. If a television program or (fictional) film misrepresents suicide or mental illness, media watchers can do several things: • Write a letter to the production company that created the program and the distribution outlet. Most films are produced and distributed by studios but some are produced by one company and then distributed by a studio or distribution company. All of this information is found in the opening credits of the film...take notes. To comment on a television program, look for the production company’s credit at the end of the show and write to the broadcast outlet (the television channel). • Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper about the program or film, ask a local columnist to do an opinion piece, or find out if your local news station will let you read a Media 15
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