How The Media Can Prevent Copycat Suicides
By: Ryan Fan
Tags: Society, Mental Health, Journalism, Health, Medium

How The Media Can Prevent Copycat Suicides

Responsible reporting around celebrity suicide goes a long way

Photo by Reagan Freeman on Unsplash

The celebrity death I was most impacted by was Chester Bennington. Chester was the lead singer of Linkin Park, my favorite band as a kid, and the lead behind my favorite songs that would play over and over again on my iPod: “Numb” and “In the End.” I was in Japan, working in an organic chemistry lab, but at the time, the news devastated me — Chester had died on July 20, 2017, by suicide.

But I had grown enough in my mental health awareness that I feared the media reporting and a possible contagion effect from that reporting. According to Gunn et al. in a 2018 study in the Archives of Suicide Research, widely publicized suicides like Robin Williams (2014) and Aaron Hernandez (2017) were associated with increased Google.com/trends data on “how to suicide” and “suicide prevention.” The authors attributed the increase in searches following Williams’s death to the Werther Effect, a spike of emulation or copycat suicides after a widely publicized suicide, and the death of Hernandez to the Papageno effect, an increase in awareness and support in suicide prevention.

The contagion effect is synonymous with the Werther Effect. The Werther effect, according to blogger Alexa Moody, was coined in the late 1700s after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s book, The Sorrows of Young Werther. In the book, the protagonist, Werther, finds himself in a love triangle and believes the only way to make it out is through suicide — although the book was widely commercially successful, the success of the book led to many copycat suicides of fans of Goethe deciding to take their own lives as well.

The Papageno effect is on the opposite side of the spectrum. Its etymology is after a character Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” where a character loses his love and plans suicide as a result. The attempt is stopped last minute by three boys who support him and tell him there are alternatives to suicide and is a positive effect the media can have on suicide.

When Chester Bennington died, suicide experts feared a contagion effect. Zach Schonfeld in Newsweek reports that Bennington’s death shocked people since many believe that wealthy and successful people don’t struggle with depression and anxiety, like other people. But depression is a disease that can affect anyone. In the words of Theresa Buhse, the associate executive director of the Long Island Crisis Center:

“Just because somebody is rich and famous does not necessarily mean that they’re happy at all…The truth is, we never know what is going on in somebody’s mind. People struggle with mental illness. People struggle with depression. It doesn’t matter how rich they are. It doesn’t matter how famous they are. We don’t know what’s going on.”

Chester’s death was its own example of the contagion effect. Chester died on what would have been Cornell’s 53rd birthday, and Cornell also died by suicide years earlier. Buhse notes that it might have been a coincidence, but people also may plan out an emotionally significant date.

Celebrity suicides sometimes have a contagion effect on the general population as well. When Marilyn Monroe died from probable suicide in 1962, the suicide rate jumped by 12 percent compared to the same months the previous year. To this day, the death of Marilyn Monroe resulted in the most copycat suicide attempts. According to Margot Sanger-Katz in the New York Times, the publicity surrounding suicide has been linked with subsequent increases in suicide, especially for young people. Analysis suggests that at least five percent of youth suicides are influenced by contagion. What irresponsible media coverage does is harm people already vulnerable and at risk for suicide.

For the media to avoid the contagion, Sanger-Katz notes that suicide prevention advocates want news media coverage to avoid emphasizing or glamorizing suicide or make it seem like an inevitable solution for people at risk. Media reports also should not fixate on graphic details of the death, and in the case of Chester, one media source prominently highlighted his method of suicide.

1962 is very different from 2020, and the media has come a long way in being responsible and diligent. Schonfeld talks about the suicide of Kurt Cobain in 1994, where experts feared a nationwide copycat effect. However, media outlets reported warning signs and provided hotline numbers, and the number of suicides in the Seattle region decreased after Cobain died, assisted by a rise in calls to local crisis centers.

According to Luna Greenstein at the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Anthony Bourdain’s suicide came only two days after the media irresponsibly reported on Kate Spade’s suicide.

Takeaways

To talk about suicide in a way that encourages people to get help and look for help, Greenstein recommends including local and national hotline numbers, as well as other crisis resources. Other recommendations include informing, not sensationalizing. Any headline of a celebrity’s death should not include suicide in the headline, and images of the method or location of death should be avoided. Instead, photos of school, work, or family can be used instead.

Greenstein also recommends choosing words carefully, using words like “increase” and “rise” rather than more sensational words like “epidemic” or “skyrocketing.” And terminology around suicide is important as well — the field is moving away from “committed suicide” and moving more around terms that do not stigmatize suicide as a crime, like “died by suicide,” “completed suicide,” “killed him/herself,” and “ended his/her life.”

Lastly, Greenstein recommends reporting on suicide as a public health issue. Suicide shouldn’t be reported the same way a crime is reported, and seeking advice from suicide prevention experts is more important than quoting police and first responders. Including the warning signs of suicide as well as a “what to do” sidebar.

“This is not a matter of being ‘politically correct.’ It’s a matter of saving lives,” Greenstein says.

We can also watch how we talk about suicide in personal circles as well using these guidelines. Just like obituaries talk mostly about how someone lived rather than how someone died, and although talking about suicide is difficult and often uncomfortable, suicide is the second leading cause of death for people aged 10 to 34 in the United States. Responsible reporting and conversation on suicide are essential.