Mini Review - (2022) Volume 8, Issue 11
Received: 25-Jul-2022, Manuscript No. IPCP-22-14024; Editor assigned: 03-Aug-2022, Pre QC No. IPCP-22-14024 (PQ); Reviewed: 27-Aug-2022, QC No. IPCP-22-14024; Revised: 10-Oct-2022, Manuscript No. IPCP-22-14024 (R); Published: 17-Oct-2022, DOI: 10.35841/2471-9854-8.11.170
This paper reviews a recent article that analyzed Portuguese journalist’s experiences and evaluations on suicide reporting, their awareness and knowledge of existing guidelines, and how they assess their relationship with mental health professionals. The study also offered a comparison between the results obtained from Portuguese journalists and those from similar studies with journalists from other countries. One major finding is that Portuguese journalists are available to contribute to increase public awareness on suicide and to promote mental health. Another important conclusion is that 42% of the surveyed Portuguese journalists believe that there is a cooperative relationship with mental health professionals, namely psychiatrists. This mini review intends to highlight the main results and conclusions of that study and contribute to suicide prevention by raising the awareness of mental health professionals about journalists perspectives on suicide.
Journalism; Suicide; Prevention; Portugal; Mental health
Irresponsible representations of suicide in the media can have harmful consequences on vulnerable individuals, known as the weather effect, but reporting on suicide following certain guidelines can contribute to suicide prevention, which is known as the papageno effect [1-6]. The danger of imitative suicidal behaviors increases when there is an extensive, prominent and sensationalist coverage, describing explicitly the used method, and repeating myths about suicide [7,8].
Nevertheless, a responsible reporting of suicide can educate the public about suicide and how to prevent it, contribute to the search of help by those at risk and to the promotion of a more open dialogue about suicide (idem). There are multiple studies from several countries about the relation (connection, association) between suicide reports in the media and copycat suicides, a question that has been debated for decades [9-15]. The World Health Organization (WHO) has a set of guidelines for responsible reporting about suicide designed specifically for media professionals, which was first released in 2000, and then updated in 2008 and 2017. There is historically high suicide numbers in some regions in Portugal, namely in Alentejo, and the topic seems to be surrounded by a cloud of silence, being a taboo for a long time in the country. Portuguese journalists had never been surveyed as a class about reporting on suicide. To fill the gap in the available information, we explored Portuguese journalist’s experiences and evaluations on suicide reporting, their awareness and knowledge of existing guidelines, and how they assess their relationship with mental health professionals.
An online questionnaire to Portuguese journalists was created based on WHO media guidelines for responsible suicide reporting and similar studies from other countries. The anonymous questionnaire was made in google forms, mainly comprising closed ended and multiple choice questions. On 17 July 2020, the Professional Journalist License Commission (CCPJ) emailed the questionnaire to 4.987 Portuguese journalists, equivalent to the total number of professional journalist valid licenses. Responses were accepted until 17 September 2020. To complement the questionnaire data, twelve semi-structured interviews were carried out in person or by video call between 17 September and 9 November 2021. The interviewees were Portuguese journalists who had reported or supervised the reporting of the death by suicide, on 20 June 2020, of Pedro Lima, a very well known and highly esteemed actor in Portugal. To complete the sample, two other journalists were interviewed, both working at the Portuguese news agency Lusa, specifically the former president of the union of Portuguese journalists, and a journalist specializing in health issues, namely in mental health.
The online questionnaire received 491 responses, equivalent to almost 10% of valid professional journalist licences in Portugal; 53% were men and 47% were women. The respondents’ professional work experience was 22 years on average with ages ranging from 21 to 82 years, and an average age of 45 years. Almost 48% of the respondents worked for newspapers, followed by television (17.5%), online news media (13.8%), news agencies (11.6%), and radio (9.2%). The majority of the respondents (53.2%) considered that there is a neutral relationship between journalists and mental health professionals, such as psychiatrists and psychologists; 42.2% answered that there is a cooperative relationship; and only 4.7% said there is a conflictual one. The questionnaire’s results show a division regarding whether suicides should be reported: 48.3% of the respondents said they should, while 51.7% said they should not. In this study we found a significant statistical correlation between media type and opinions on whether suicides should be reported (Pearson R=0.105, p=0.020). Most journalists working for news agencies, radio, or television answered suicides should not be reported, while most journalists working for the press or online news media said they should. There were no relevant differences in the answers based on sex, age, years of professional experience, or job function. Most of the surveyed journalists agreed with suicide reporting to make the population more alert about risk factors and warning signs (52.4%) and to encourage public debate on the topic (50.1%), but the majority also claimed that reporting on suicide would not have a preventive effect (51.1%). A relevant percentage of Portuguese journalists did not support reporting on suicides because of the potential to trigger other people to die by suicide (48.1%) and to protect the privacy of family and friends (47.5%), and almost 47% rejected the idea that reporting on suicides only serves sensationalist interests.
Despite the initial division over whether suicides should be reported, only a minority of the Portuguese journalists 9.6% answered that suicides should be reported "under no circumstances". Almost 60% believed suicide should be reported when it assumes public interest, 52.5% to transmit useful information as a public health problem, almost 46% to contribute to its prevention, about 35% to launch the debate on the topic and almost 31% when public figures are involved.
Another conclusion of the study was that about 58% of the surveyed journalists stated not knowing the WHO guidelines for responsible suicide reporting, only 6.9% had heard about them during pre professional training, and 6.7% through an awareness raising campaign, which are worrying findings.
According to the authors, the WHO’s guidelines were asked about because they are the basis for the national recommendations, but there are no practical sanctions in Portugal for what could be considered a less ethical approach to suicide reporting. A positive finding was that 77% of the surveyed journalists believed suicide stories should include support contacts, and 86% supported the inclusion of risk factors and warning signs, which is in accordance with WHO guidelines. Eighty percent of the surveyed journalists considered that the suicide method should not be mentioned in suicide stories, and around 59% answered the location should not be revealed. Almost 36% of the Portuguese journalists considered suicide a taboo in journalism because it is also a taboo in Portuguese society, and nearly 28% stated that suicide is taboo in Portuguese journalism because of the associated stigma. In this sense, it is curious to note that about 67% of the surveyed journalists from Northern Portugal were against media reporting on suicides, which is precisely the Portuguese region with a stronger Catholic tradition.
There was a significant statistical correlation between the different Portuguese regions and the answers on whether suicides should be reported (Pearson R=0.124, p=0.006).
It is relevant to note that 42% of the surveyed Portuguese journalists considered there is a cooperative relationship with mental health professionals, which recalls the idea that there is “a need for media professionals and suicide experts to work together to balance newsworthiness against the risk of copycat behavior” [16-18]. One interviewed Portuguese journalist even said that journalists are “the bridge between specialist’s public health and mental health professionals and the public, who needs the information to be deconstructed and somehow processed in order to be presented in a way that everyone understands. About this we can say that the pandemic brought many mental health specialists to the media scene, and this may have influenced their relationship with media professionals. Otherwise, maybe there would have been a higher percentage of neutral answers in the questionnaire. Our findings suggest that Portuguese journalists are visibly divided over suicide reporting, echoing a division on a global scale [19]. But despite the division over whether suicides should be reported, only a minority of the Portuguese professionals answered that suicides should be reported “under no circumstances”, which goes in line with German journalists defensive attitude of not reporting on suicide (n=30), even though individual suicide cases were to be reported if meeting some criteria. In fact, many of the findings of the study recall the notion of journalistic tribe as a transnational community. It was also found an alignment between most of the Portuguese journalists surveyed, New Zealand journalists (n=15), American journalists (n=50), and Canadian media professionals (n=11) on reporting suicide when it assumes public interest, to transmit useful information about suicide as a public health problem, to promote public discussion on the topic, and to alert to risk factors and warning signs of suicidal behavior. In line with international counterparts, half of the Portuguese journalists believed that suicides should not be reported because of the potential for copycat behavior. Most American journalists were also aware of possible contagion effects, and Canadian media professionals acknowledged suicide contagion as a legitimate concept, although several questioned the validity of the research linking it to media reporting. Likewise, some Portuguese professionals questioned the practice of not reporting suicides to avoid imitative behaviors. Another common transnational idea among journalists is that celebrity suicides should be used as a pretext to talk about suicide, increasing public awareness about it. This was argued by some interviewed Portuguese journalists, and New Zealand news executives (n=12), American journalists, and German journalists were also in agreement that suicide is newsworthy when involving a public figure or celebrity. Other relevant findings were that almost 90% of the Portuguese journalists believed there should be a selective disclosure of data when reporting on suicide, and nearly 60% admitted a conflict with the journalistic central value of telling the entire story. For Irish journalists (n=18), as well, there was a dilemma between reporting a death as a suicide and protecting the privacy of a family. German journalists also felt pressure to find the balance between responsible reporting and the need for attention and circulation.
Our study shows that although suicide still appears as a taboo in Portuguese newsrooms, Portuguese journalists want to promote public discussion of suicide and cooperate with mental health specialists, in line with other countries counterparts. This is a positive finding in the path of building stronger bridges between media and mental health professionals, namely psychiatrists.
Citation: Ribeiro E, Granado A (2023) Portuguese Journalists Available to Cooperate with Psychiatrists to Increase Public Awareness on Suicide. Clin Psychiatry. 10:01.
Copyright: © 2022 Ribeiro E, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
