Pass it on: responsible media coverage of suicide

As a kid one of my favorite group games was Pass It On. How exciting it was to pass a message along from between carefully cupped hands (to keep anyone from overhearing) by whispering it into the ear of the kid next to you, the “rumour” making its way around the circle in moist, tickling breaths. Back at the first person the garbled results are reported out loud, along with the original sentence, the message twisted beyond recognition. Blew my mind every time.

In reporting on suicide, passing on the message is seen as dangerous and taking breaks between stories is a form of suicide prevention. Research, beyond any doubt, has proven that covering suicides can lead to copycats, but evidence is mounting fast that supports talking about suicide as also being crucial to prevention.

With social media forcing us all to come to grips with the theory of contagion, researchers now suggest that answers might be found in how and when suicide is reported on in the media.

Eric Windeler chooses his words very carefully as he spares a few minutes over the phone. He’s come up with scripts he uses to educate journalists.

Windeler is the founder of the Jack Project and a father who knows what losing someone to suicide feels like; he lost his son Jack to suicide in 2010. As Windeler educates me, I listen hard.

“I make sure the journalist uses the right language, I insist on ‘die by suicide’ or ‘lose your life by suicide.’ You never ‘commit’ suicide, which is the go-to term for the uninformed and is stigma-reinforcing,” says Windeler. “Suicide should never be glorified in headlines. According to the stats, 90 percent of the time there is something else going on, the person is struggling. Stories that don’t bring in mental health are generally not as responsible as they could be.”

The idea of suicide as stigmatizing possibly arose during the struggle between ancient Rome and newly forming Christianity. Suicide in those days was thought to be the ultimate act of piety, a sacrifice, and Christians were killing themselves faster than the Romans could find hungry lions.

Alarmed, Jewish authorities came up with a cover story: because Judas Iscariot sacrificed himself trying to atone, and as he was such a rotten apple, anything he did (ergo “commit” a suicide) was “logically” a sin. The decree worked. The Christians stopped doing the work of the Romans for them, and systemic stigma stuck.

Media headlines tend to shoot first and ask questions later. It just sells more papers. But the media is not alone in spreading shock and awe. We all play into contagion when we share certain details on social media. Wendeler wants to see less of this kind of sharing.

“A basic of suicide reporting is the means and method are not reported. Avoid disturbing words, especially in the headlines. In a perfect world, provide supports to people potentially affected by the article,” he says. “If links are included, an article is a respectful piece.”

Over the phone, Jack Knox, columnist with the Times Colonist, spoke with me about conventional wisdom and media’s habit of dampening down on covering suicide.

“We always default to openness, believe in the free exchange of information, so not talking about something goes against the grain of journalism,” says Knox. “But when it comes to suicide, we often go the other way. Until more is known, the consequences of openness, of breaking the taboo and inspiring copycats: few journalists want to take that chance.”

Constable Mike Russell of the Victoria Police Department believes there isn’t enough empirical evidence getting through to the ranks.

“If I had empirical evidence on reporting or not, and it went up the chain of command, I’m sure it would change things tomorrow. And more conversations would seem a good idea,” says Russell.

As it turns out, loads of research is out there on the theory of contagion. But in many cases it’s effectively blocked from reaching the frontlines. There are barriers barring access to the research, much of it held in hawk by university memberships, or hidden in books, or inches deep in studies.

To unravel the common threads is painstakingly meticulous, slow work few have time for. And often statistics conflict, or are hard to trace to their source. And there are breakdowns of communication at the borders of each township, tooŃuntil it all finally drops into the bottomless gap between the provinces and Ottawa.

It would seem, in this dawn of education-by-feelings on social media, there’s an opportunity for the citizens and journalists to pull off suicide prevention in a big way. Traditional reliance on media dissemination as a one-way street is over. We are being forced to interact with each other, with the kids who are posting about suicide way out in front, in a so-far largely unsupported free-for-all.

“I got into journalism to save the world, to create change, but reporting on suicide is a conversation that never seems to go anywhere. But how do you quantify contagion theory? How do we find out when reporting is effective, and who for? I wouldn’t mind seeing those numbers,” muses Knox.

In the US, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has produced guidelines called “Reporting on Suicide: Recommendations for the Media,” as part of a public-private partnership project recommended by the Office of the Surgeon General’s National Strategy for Suicide Prevention.

The report opens with the declaration that “suicide contagion is real,” then goes on to warn against scaring people with shocking headlines.

“The media can play a powerful role in educating the public about suicide prevention,” it says. “Implementations of recommendations for media coverage of suicide has been shown to decrease suicide rates.”

The report lists some main points on what might contribute to contagion: Certain ways of describing suicide; romanticizing or idealizing by portraying suicide as heroic or romantic; exposure to suicide method (detailed description of the method, pictures of the location); and presenting suicide as the inexplicable act of an otherwise healthy or high-achieving person.

There’s a lot more in the report, on how to interview surviving relatives and friends, reporting on contributing factors, language, and exceptions to the rule. It also provides tips on “angles to pursue.”

The report does a very good job of informing and attempts to convey a balance of research. But most people won’t read it. Among editors, journalists, citizens, and in the offices of suicide prevention, in the stigma-reinforcing phenomena Wendeler warns against, many, ironically, won’t get past the report’s first headline, and may even go on to cite the report based only on the headlines it contains.

If the message is to come through unhindered, time has to be set aside to clear the line, beginning by clarifying what exactly suicide is and what causes it.

Professor Michael J. Kral is a Canadian researcher with an extensive background in the complexity of suicide, and a focus on First Nations youth. Kral views suicide from a cultural perspective, as something internalized by a community, and pokes holes in common beliefs in suicide.

His work encourages us to shift from thinking of suicide as something an individual does alone to something that’s a product of a collective. He notes there’s a lot of research on media and suicide and provides links to two papers. One by S. Gould, called “Suicide and the Media,” and a second, T. Niederkrotenthaler’s “Copycat effects after media reports on suicide: A population-based ecologic study.” More eye-opening, and dare I suggest, required reading.

Essentially, we need a new game of Pass It On. It would appear the message is starting on down the line, and that’s encouraging. People like Windeler have an idea about how to get that information safely through to the people who most need it.

“My son Jack was struggling, but there wasn’t anyone around him trained to identify it,” explains Windeler. “At the Jack Project we let young people take ownership of this issue: they will shine a bright light on something we all need to be prepared to talk about. This is the number one threat young people are facing. It can’t be ignored any longer.”