Reporting suicides

One of tomorrow's lecturers is Joe Little, RTE's Religious and Social Affairs Correspondent. You've probably seen him on the news! He'll be talking about psychiatry and the media. One of the most pressing issues in this regard is how suicides are reported. The way suicides are reported has been shown to affect suicide rates. You can look at some guidelines here. Reporting of suicide methods also can affect which methods are used. For instance, in Singapore some high profile deaths by suicide involved charcoal burning, and subsequently the proportion of suicides by this method increased (you can read about this here.