Curbing the suicide contagion

In 1774, German polymath and writer Johann Wolfgang Goethe published his novel “The Sorrows Of Young Werther”, a book in which the protagonist takes his own life once he realises that he won’t be able to marry the woman he loves. The book led to a “suicide contagion” or what began to be called “the Werther effect” and was eventually banned in many countries after several ended their lives in a style closely resembling Werther.

A young life cut short abruptly is distressing anywhere in the world but an article that appeared in the media last week pointed out that the student suicide rate in India has surpassed the population growth rate, more evidence of how we as a society are collectively failing our students and youngsters. The article spurred me into spending some time speaking to a range of students, academicians and principals, a few mental health professionals and those vested in this system while reading some of the resources they urged me to delve into.
While readers must be aware of how media and news reporting play a role in abetting and reducing imitative behaviour, I was surprised to learn just how significant a role the media can play in reporting such incidents.
Numerous studies have shown that there is an increased correlation between the way a news report or even a news headline is structured or displayed and higher suicide rates. A study conducted over a 20-year period by researcher D.P Phillips showed that there was an increase in the number of reported suicides in 26 of the 33 months in which a suicide report appeared on the front page of national newspapers. A more recent study has shown that the sensationalist reporting on the suicide of famous actor and comedian Robin Williams was associated with a 10% increase in suicides (an excess of 1841 suicides) in the USA from August to December 2014. Similarly, after media reporting on the suicides of famous fashion designer Kate Spade and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain in 2018, 418 more suicides than expected occurred in the subsequent two months in the USA.
Perhaps the most educative document I read was the WHO’s 2023 preventing suicide resource for media professionals: a guide on how we as the media can play a more constructive role in reducing this menace. I urge all editors and journalists reporting on this sensitive matter to go through this valuable document, which highlights do’s and don’ts based on scientific evidence and cites many instances of how media coverage can influence the narrative from across the world.
Readers will attest to this but there are dozens of suicide news reports in India, which explicitly flout the suggested guidelines, often mentioning the method deployed or other circumstances, some of which can be quite graphic. At times, images of nooses and other grim reminders accompany such articles, which highlight the sordidness of the act while sensationalising it.
But at a national level, there are a few immediate steps the central government can take to prevent such deaths from occurring. Considering the mounting evidence, many countries have instituted and operationalised national media guidelines on suicide reporting with positive results.
In Vienna, for instance, the introduction of national media guidelines on subway suicides reduced the sensational reportage and subway suicides fell by 75 % while citywide suicides fell by 25% over the period of study. India currently only has Press Council of India guidelines (introduced in 2019) but can easily introduce a set of national guidelines since a broader strategy is clearly the need of the hour. The WHO and the International Association for Suicide Prevention have developed a set of international guidelines, which can be adopted as well.
Former director of WHO’s mental health and substance abuse department (MSD), Shekhar Saxena, says that the “media can play a substantial role in preventing suicides by following the WHO resource for media professionals, critical in a country like India where the youth suicide rates are high and increasing”.
Media guidelines need to apply equally to the Internet and over-the-top (OTT) content sites. Globally, systematic reviews have established that the Internet and social media use were associated with self-harm by adolescents.
More recently, a friend mentioned how her niece had joined a “suicide pact” after intense bullying at her school, worrying her parents to death in the process. On further enquiry, I learnt that there has been a proliferation of pro-suicide websites and such pacts among adolescents. These websites typically describe suicide methods and offer a forum for suicidal individuals. Some implicitly or explicitly encourage suicide pacts. It is unclear to me why the authorities can’t clamp down on such sites as it has on pornographic ones.
The same holds true for OTT platforms and the content available on them. A Netflix series, ‘13 Reasons Why’, a fictional story of a teenage girl who leaves behind 13 video recordings on tapes after taking her life and in which the end of her life is portrayed in great detail was found by a researcher to have led to a significant increase in adolescent suicides in the US, particularly among young girls.
Clamping down is one aspect but evidence is now available that hope can be as powerful a deterrent. Researchers have found that news reports that fell into the “mastery of crisis class” were negatively associated with suicide rates (there was a marked decrease in the suicide rate following these stories). The term “Papageno effect” has been coined to describe this positive phenomenon. Papageno is a character in Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute” who becomes suicidal because he fears losing his true love, Papagena. He is about take to his own life when three boys come to his rescue, offering him alternatives and he changes his decision.
Let me end by pointing out that this is perhaps one of the biggest crises facing us as a society today. To what extent the government of the day is seized of or tackling this issue remains unclear but it can act swiftly by introducing a set of well-defined and rigidly enforced media guidelines for a start. Meanwhile, we as the media, can do our bit by reporting with restraint. Focus on the constructive instead of the destructive.
Anjuli Bhargava is a senior journalist who writes on governance, infrastructureand the social sector. The views expressed are personal