The Media and Suicide: A Cautionary View
Abstract
Summary: There is now unequivocal statistical evidence of an association between some media portrayals of suicide and further subsequent suicide. However, it is a weak association, and it is probably of far less importance than our need to address basic principles of good mental health management. Rather than prescribe to the media how to report suicide, its potentially positive effects should be addressed.
References
(1828). Commentaries on the causes, forms, symptoms, and treatment, moral and medical, of insanity. London: Thomas and George Underwood
(2001). Temporal clustering of child homicide: Contagion or illusion?. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 34, 182–192
(1977). Family murder followed by suicide. Forensic Science, 9, 219–228
(1986). A spate of suicide by jumping. Australian Journal of Social Issues, 21, 119–125
(1989). Suicide: The role of the media. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 23, 30–34
(1990). Time-space clustering of teenage suicides. American Journal of Epidemiology, 131, 71–78
(1994). Prevention of suicide: Aspirations and evidence. British Medical Journal, 308, 1227–1233
(1994). Reporting suicide. British Medical Journal, 308, 1446–1447
(1993). Adolescent suicide clusters: Evidence, mechanism and prevention. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 27, 653–665
(1998). Lack of continuity—A problem in the care of young suicides. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 97, 326–333
(1990). Is a spate of suicides a cluster?. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 70, 46–46
(1997). The effectiveness of suicide prevention centers: A review. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 27, 304–310
(1967). Suicide and suggestibility—the role of the press. American Journal of Psychiatry, 124, 252–256
(2001). Safety First: Five-year report of the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness. London: Department of Health Publications
(1911). To what extent are suicide and other crimes against the person due to suggestion from the press?. Bulletin of the American Academy of Medicine, 12, 264–306
(1974). The influence of suggestion on suicide: Substantive and theoretical implications of the Werther effect. American Sociological Review, 39, 340–354
(1979). Suicide, motor vehicle fatalities, and the mass media: Evidence toward a theory of suggestion. American Journal of Sociology, 84, 1150–1174
(1986). Clustering of teenage suicides after television news stories about suicide. New England Journal of Medicine, 315, 685–689
(1988). The Werther effect after television films—Evidence for an old hypothesis. Psychological Medicine, 18, 665–676
(2000). The role of mass media in suicide prevention. In K Hawton, K van Heeringen (Eds.), International handbook of suicide and attempted suicide. Chichester: Wiley
(1990). Audience receptiveness, the media and aged suicides. Journal of Ageing Studies, 4, 195–209
(1911). The newspapers and crime. Bulletin of the American Academy of Medicine, 12, 316–325
(1999). Suicidal feelings in the last years of life in elderly people who commit suicide. Lancet, 354, 917–918
(1885). Suicide: Its history, literature, jurisprudence, causation and prevention. London: H.K. Lewis