Volume 4 Issue 4 April, 2014
Suicide rates in South Asia are one of the highest in the world, and it is known that media guidelines for suicide reporting are not followed adequately. Several countries have prescribed standard guidelines for media professionals on suicide reporting. However, the implementation of these guidelines has been varied. News papers, television news reports and magazines focus on the story with morbid fascinations breaking all available media guidelines on the reporting of suicide. Evidence suggests that imitation might indeed play a significant role in the frequency of suicide.
In suicide prevention one of the recognized public health approaches is responsible media reporting on suicidal
behaviors. Notions about suicidal contagion after reporting cases of suicide in newspapers go back to 19th century
medical literature. In the literature, suicide contagion is also referred to as imitative, copycat or mass cluster suicide.
Mass media imitation theory presumes that if modeling works in one way (copycat suicides), it can work also on the
other way (positive model). For indicating negative, provoking effect of media portrayal, the expression ‘Werther effect’
was introduced already decades ago and for the opposite, preventive effect the expression ‘Papageno effect’ was
proposed by Niederkrotenhaler and colleagues. The ‘Werther effect’ refers to Goethe’s novel “The sorrows of Young
Werther “(1774), where a young man takes his life for love by shooting himself. The ‘Papageno effect’ refers to Mozart’s
opera “The Magic Flute” (1791), where a young man in love becomes suicidal, but copes well.
Media is a significant agent in social construction of reality; especially for vulnerable persons. Strong modeling effect of
media coverage on suicide is based on age and gender. Individuals with demographic background similar to the person who committed highly publicized suicidal act (in most of the cases celebrities) are more vulnerable and receptive for identification.
Several studies have measured the style of media reporting about suicide before and after recommendations for media, and show that modification of reporting on suicidal behavior is feasible and can be effective.
The conclusion appears inescapable that reports about celebrities which are multi-modal, repeated, explicit, front page,
glorify the suicide, and describe the method lead to an increase in deaths from suicide, particularly in the region in which reports are published. But the stark contrast in approach demonstrates the gulf which exists between professional opinions about the impact of such reports and the media’s insistence on the public’s right to know.
Dr. Rohini T, MBBS, MD; Assistant Professor, Vydehi Institute of Medical Sciences, Bangalore.
