Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2016 Oct-Dec;58(4):443-447.
doi: 10.4103/0019-5545.196704.

Celebrity suicide and its effect on further media reporting and portrayal of suicide: An exploratory study

Devavrat Harshe  1 , Sagar Karia  2 , Sneha Harshe  3 , Nilesh Shah  2 , Gurudas Harshe  1 , Avinash De Sousa  2
Affiliations

Celebrity suicide and its effect on further media reporting and portrayal of suicide: An exploratory study

Devavrat Harshe et al. Indian J Psychiatry. 2016 Oct-Dec.

Abstract

Background: Suicide is a grave mental health problem in India, and suicide rates in India have risen over the past decades. Suicide reporting by the media is a common cause for spurts of suicides that may occur from time to time. The aim of the present study was to assess the change in trends in media reporting of suicide after a celebrity suicide.

Methodology: Suicide by the renowned actor Robin Williams was selected as the reference case. The top three Indian daily newspapers published in English having the highest circulation as per the Registrar of Newspapers, Government of India report were selected to be scanned in the study. These were the Times of India - Mumbai edition, Mumbai Mirror, and the Daily News Analysis - Mumbai edition. The authors screened all news stories in the three newspapers within a 6-month period (3 months prior and 3 months post the date of the reference suicide case), and these news reports were evaluated as per the suicide reporting guidelines for media laid down by the Indian Psychiatric Society. The data were analyzed using Chi-square test and descriptive statistics where appropriate.

Results: A total of 708 newspaper articles were identified on the basis of the guidelines mentioned above. Nearly 88% (n = 623) of the articles directly covered suicide while 4.09% (n = 29) focused on suicidal threats and 7.91% (n = 56) focused on parasuicide behavior. There was a significantly greater increase in the total number of articles printed after the celebrity suicide (n = 409) for all article types except teasers as compared to that before the celebrity suicide (n = 299). There was a significantly greater increase in front page news on suicide after the celebrity suicide (P = 0.0016), description of the method of suicide (P = 0.0221), and the mention of the suicide notes (P = 0.0002). Most articles after the celebrity suicide placed the blame on someone or the environment for the act (P = 0.0001).

Conclusions: A change in media trend toward reporting suicide was noted post a celebrity suicide, and it is important that media follow guidelines stringently when reporting a serious problem like suicide.

Keywords: Celebrity suicide; media; newspaper; suicide; suicide attempt; suicide note.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

There are no conflicts of interest.

References

    1. Vijayakumar L. Indian research on suicide. Indian J Psychiatry. 2010;52(Suppl 1):S291–6. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Vijaykumar L. Suicide and its prevention: The urgent need in India. Indian J Psychiatry. 2007;49:81–4. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Hittner JB. How robust is the Werther effect? A re-examination of the suggestion-imitation model of suicide. Mortality. 2005;10:193–200.
    1. Niederkrotenthaler T, Voracek M, Herberth A, Till B, Strauss M, Etzersdorfer E, et al. Role of media reports in completed and prevented suicide: Werther v. Papageno effects. Br J Psychiatry. 2010;197:234–43. - PubMed
    1. Pirkis J, Blood RW, Beautrais A, Burgess P, Skehans J. Media guidelines on the reporting of suicide. Crisis. 2006;27:82–7. - PubMed