Suicide and Media Attention

The news media tends to focus on suicides with the greatest potential to contribute to copycat suicides or to distort the public’s understanding of suicide, according to a study from Australia. The authors found that suicides by young people, involving particularly violent means (e.g. firearms or a moving vehicle), taking place in a public setting, or involving  multiple deaths (e.g. suicide pacts or murder-suicides) were over-represented in the news relative to their actual frequency among suicide deaths..

Of the 2161 suicides that took place in Australia from September 1, 2006 to August 31, 2007, only 29 (1.3%) were covered by the Australian media. Suicides by people under the age of 30 were significantly more likely to be covered than were those of people over the age of 59. Suicides involving firearms, fire, and moving vehicles were significantly more likely to result in media reports than suicides by other means, such as hanging. The media was significantly more likely to report on suicides taking place in public settings (e.g. office buildings, hospitals, and detention facilities) than suicides occurring in homes – the setting of 44 percent of the suicides during the study period. A suicide pact involving two teenage girls accounted for 100 of the 390 news reports on the 29 suicides covered by the Australian news during the 12-month period studied.

This summary based on: Machlin, A., Pirkis, J., and Spittal, M.J. (2013). Which suicides are reported in the media – and what makes them ‘newsworthy’? Crisis 34(5): 305-313.

SPRC Commentary

Although based on relatively few deaths, this study found that – at least in Australia – the media focuses on suicides that involve younger people, public places, or multiple deaths. This pattern may distort the public’s perception of suicide by obscuring some meaningful risk factors such as older age, mental illness, and previous suicide attempts. For more information on how the media can responsibly and accurately report on suicide, see Recommendations for Reporting on Suicide.