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For Media Professionals
Safe and Responsible Reporting on Suicide: Shaping the Narrative to Save Lives
How suicide is reported can shape public understanding, influence attitudes, and affect those who are most vulnerable.
The Media Toolkit equips professionals with best practices for reporting on suicide responsibly—as a public health issue—while helping to prevent contagion, reduce harm, and encourage help-seeking and hope.
Explore best practices for covering suicide-related topics.
Best Practices for Reporting on Sucide
Learn how to responsibly cover suicide, including language use, avoiding sensationalism, and prioritizing help-seeking information.
Reducing the Risk of Contagion
Understanding the risks of suicide contagion and implementing strategies to mitigate harmful effects of coverage.
Safe Messaging: How to Talk About Suicide
Using appropriate language when discussing suicide is essential to reducing stigma and preventing harm. Always include resources.
Access the complete Media Toolkit.
Discover trusted tools & resources for ethical media reporting.
Reporting on Suicide
The Recommendations for Reporting on Suicide were developed by leading experts in suicide prevention and in collaboration with several international suicide prevention and public health organizations, schools of journalism, media organizations and key journalists as well as Internet safety experts. The recommendations are based on more than 50 international studies on suicide contagion.
The following resources are courtesy of the Stanford Psychiatry Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing’s Media and Mental Health Initiative.
Media & Mental Health Initiative
The MMHI Core Team is comprised of mental health and suicide prevention leaders and senior media professionals who serve as an interdisciplinary group that advises on outreach strategies for engaging the news media, entertainment media, and social media. This group does outreach, training and provides consultation and reporting guidance to media professionals. They can be reached at mediamhinfo@stanford.edu.
TEMPOS
TEMPOS is the first tool that allows media professionals, public health officials, researchers, and suicide prevention experts to assess adherence to the recommended reporting guidelines with a user- friendly, standardized rating scale.
RROCS
Reporting Responsibly On Campus Suicide (RROCS) provides a set of guidelines and comprehensive education for students writing about campus suicides, as well as effective strategies for covering wellness in the aftermath of crisis. RROCS is based on the extensive recommendations developed by leading experts in the fields of suicide prevention, journalism, and mental health to help student journalists cover suicide without substantially increasing the risk for suicidal behavior.
GoodforMEdia
#GoodforMEdia is a youth-led peer mentoring and education program that supports young people to engage with media in ways that support their mental health. GFM takes a nuanced approach to technology and social media’s effects on youth mental health, and centers youth voices in strategies and solutions.