Suicide in the Media
When Marilyn Monroe passed away from an overdose, the suicide rate raised temporarily by up to 12% in the following month. This is not a coincidence. The science of suicide contagion, also known as the Werthers Effect, is “the phenomenon of indirect exposure to suicide or suicidal behaviors influencing others to attempt to kill themselves”. This idea has been looked at many different times, and is highly controversial in terms of it’s validity. However, may studies have found increases in suicide rates (local or otherwise depending on the person and the spread of news) after a publishing of information of a suicide.
A study in Vienna had a positive turn around, when after an increase of suicides with the implementation of the subway system and the media coverage of said deaths, a group called the Austrian Association for Suicide Prevention created a set of guidelines to use when reporting on subjects of suicide. This set of guidelines was implemented, and “the media reports changed markedly and the number of subway-suicides and -attempts dropped more than 80% from the first to the second half of 1987, remaining at a rather low level since”.
While there are plenty of guidelines and lists of advice when it comes to reporting suicide as a journalist, the implementation, from what I’ve found, is not nearly as regulated as it appears to have been in the Vienna study, and certainly without the large change in suicide rates.
These guidelines include things like avoiding sensationalist headlines, “describing a suicide as inexplicable or ‘without warning’”, and “including photos/videos of the location or method of death, grieving family, friends, memorials or funerals”.
However, these guidelines are harder now because it “has to be weighed against a journalistic duty to keep the public informed. And in the Internet era, a person who wants to know details of a suicide won’t have a hard time finding them. Most of the research on suicide contagion predates the rise of social media”. That last bit of the quote is very important. In the world of social media and the internet, what of the story is a trigger for suicide contagion and at what level will people look for information on a story?
People like to discuss ways to prevent suicide contagion, many citing the United States National Suicide Prevention line, but that leads me to ask more questions. Do people call that number when they are down? Or when they are severely contemplating it? The national suicide prevention line states that in 2014, they answered about 1.5 million calls. That number is very high, but are the people calling the line the same ones triggered by suicide contagion?Overall, this story is a heartbreaking correlation that I hope is continually researched, or that journalism begins to implement the guidelines provided by suicide prevention groups.
As with all suicide-based stories, if you feel distressed, or need crises assistance, I urge you to reach out to the National Suicide Prevention line, 1–800–273–8255.
