GUIDELINES TO encourage the responsible reporting of suicide by the media have been updated to include advice on the reporting of murder-suicide and so-called copycat suicides.
The guidelines from the Samaritans and the Irish Association of Suicidology also include information on working with bereaved families, understanding suicide and the online treatment of suicide topics.
There have been a number of murder-suicides in recent years, all of which generated significant media coverage. The guidelines say there is evidence that the reporting of murder-suicide can lead to “copycat” events.
“Great care must be taken to have a balanced approach to reporting these very tragic events,” the guidelines state. “For elements of the media, they seem to provide a licence to indulge in idle speculation, misinformation and wild fantasy.”
They express “major concern” at the way survivors and extended families who are still in shock “can be exploited by the media to make ‘good’ television and news stories”.
On “copycat” suicides, the guidelines point out that up to 13 per cent of teenage suicides occur in clusters. They say that certain ways of describing suicide in the news contribute to “copycat” suicides.
They note a newspaper report in Hong Kong that gave a detailed description of the method used by a person who died by suicide. Within three years, the number of suicides using that method had increased from zero to 10 per cent.
In another case, a German television series that depicted the railway suicide of a young man at the start of each episode was blamed for a 175 per cent rise in railway suicides in young people during and after the series.
The guidelines advise against giving explicit details of the suicide method used and say that the media should avoid giving simplistic explanations for suicide.
The Samaritans can be contacted at 1850 609090.
