Analysis of Media Reports on Suicide in the Military and Recommendations for Best Practices

Aims: Media reporting of suicide can lead to imitating suicide-related behavior (Stack, 2000). Media portrayals of Department of Defense (DoD) suicide events possibly influence suicide behavior, stigma, and perceptions of suicide among members of the military. Goal 4 of the Defense Strategy for Suicide Prevention encourages responsible media reporting and portrayals of Military Community suicide and mental illnesses and promotes the accuracy and safety of online content related to suicides in the Department. The World Health Organization (WHO) in partnership with the International Association for Suicide Prevention released a resource for media professionals about how to report on suicide (WHO, 2008). The aim of this study was to determine how well the WHO guidelines were followed for media reporting of DoD suicide events.

Method: Articles were collected on a weekly basis and fall into two broad categories: 1) articles related to a specific suicide event (suicide or suicide attempt), or 2) articles more broadly related to suicide prevention in DoD. Edwards-Stewart et al. (2011) adapted a content analytic structure consistent with guidelines for reporting on suicide into a truncated rating system intended to maximize reliability of the ratings. The Defense Suicide Prevention Office (DSPO) adopted the Edwards-Stewart rubric to score articles in 14 areas related to article headline, article content, and inclusion of suicide prevention resources. The score reported is the percentage of areas that were compliant with the guidelines as described in the Edwards-Stewart scheme.

Results: 313 media articles from 2014 to 2016 were identified and scored. An article that aligns with every guideline would score 100%. The average score for the 313 articles identified was 71%. First quarter scores are ten percentage points lower on average. The four most frequently observed violations were 1) Using the word “suicide” in the headline, 2) Providing suicide event location, 3) Providing method of suicide event in the article, and 4) Failing to provide prevention resources.

Conclusions: This presentation will discuss the development of the metrics used and will describe the research-informed approach to evaluating suicide reporting. This study may lead to better training and education for media sources. Increases in responsible reporting could educate the public about suicide and encourage those at risk of suicide to seek help. Several actions available to improve suicide reporting will be discussed.