Few issues are more difficult for journalists to report on than suicide. Yet it is, sadly, a topic that has to be reported and reflected on with terrible frequency. A report by John Cullen for the National Office of Suicide Prevention (NOSP) found, in one twelve-month period alone, 1,596 items on suicide in the Irish print media, an average of 133 a month.
Suicide itself is not a new phenomenon, but this level of coverage certainly is. It is driven in part by the evidence that suicide rates rose exponentially in Ireland from the 1970s until the late 1990s and have since remained at a high level, especially among young men. But the coverage is also driven by a realisation that the old tendency to cover up suicide, with both coroners and newspapers under-reporting its incidence, probably contributed to the problem.
As both Derek Chambers of the NOSP and Tony Bates of the youth mental health centre, Headstrong, agree in today's Head 2 Head discussion on the opinion page, striking the right balance between sensitivity and openness is not easy. It is conspicuous, indeed, that their approaches to the issue differ more in nuance than in fundamentals. Both are acutely aware that thoughtless coverage can have disastrous effects but that silence is not an option.
Irish Timespolicy on the reporting of suicide attempts to respect these nuances while facing up to a crucial issue for our society.
We do not identify those who have died, unless a compelling public interest - such as the death of a well-known person, a public suicide, a debate over voluntary euthanasia or a mass suicide - demands otherwise. We try to avoid graphic details that would sensationalise suicide and information on the methods used that might encourage copycat incidents. We neither use terms such as "commit suicide" which are redolent of an era when suicide was regarded as a crime, nor language which would glamorise what must always be seen as a negative, destructive act. We do not, for example, use terms such "a successful (or unsuccessful) suicide attempt". Suicide never represents success.
Like the rest of Irish society, however, we are acutely aware that we are all engaged in a continuing attempt to understand, and therefore to represent accurately, one of the most painful aspects of contemporary Ireland. We will continue to listen to those with experience of, and expertise on, the problem, in the hope of bringing a little closer the day when we do not have to report on suicide so often.