vitaliy rigalovsky 6MU5TGt zqk unsplashSuicide, traditionally regarded as a prevalent issue in Global Northern countries, has recently witnessed an alarming rise in the communities of the Global South, defying any geographic and demographic differences. This trend includes religious groups such as Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Hindus, despite some teachings within these faiths traditionally acting as a protective cover against suicide (Osafo et al., 2021; Shoib et al., 2022; Vijayakumar & John, 2018). Likewise, the prevalence of suicide has seen an upward trajectory in many low- and middle-income African and Latin American countries in recent years (Babajani et al., 2023; Dávila-Cervantes, 2022).

Media contagion, alternatively called the Werther effect plays a role in escalating the risk of suicide among those who are inclined to take their own life (Ittefaq et al., 2023; Kamboh & Ittefaq, 2019). Both concepts operate on the premise that exposure to suicide content, especially when portrayed irresponsibly, can trigger suicidal thoughts and actions in vulnerable individuals. In contrast, the Papageno effect is the positive influence of media coverage that responsibly portrays stories of recovery and help-seeking behaviors regarding suicide. It emphasizes the importance of providing hope and alternatives to suicide (Niederkrotenthaler & Till, 2019).

Many organizations and health authorities have established guidelines for responsible reporting on suicide to minimize the risk of the Werther effect and enhance the Papageno effect among vulnerable individuals. These guidelines generally emphasize the importance of language, tone, and the framing of suicide-related stories to avoid sensationalism and provide helpful information and resources for those who may be struggling with mental health issues (Mishara & Dargis, 2019). Based on these guidelines, several organizations provide training to journalists on responsible and ethical suicide reporting worldwide. Extensive research focuses on examining how local mass and social media adhere to or violate suicide reporting guidelines (Ittefaq et al., 2023; Kamboh & Ittefaq, 2019).

Most of these studies found more violations than compliance in different parts of the world. Contemporarily, Global Northern communication scholarship have gone one step further and started evidencing the effectiveness of these guidelines by revealing that repeated releases of recommendations for responsible reporting on suicide have significantly improved the quality of suicide reporting (Ju et al., 2024, Sinyor et al., 2024).
Though most suicide reporting resources are issued by Global Northern organizations for the guidance of native media outlets, the World Health Organization (WHO) has devised a general document for the consumption of media professionals across the globe (World Health Organization, 2023).

However, there exist different patterns of suicide and sociocultural, economic, and environmental reasons behind intentional self-harm between North and South and even among and within the communities of the Global South (Snowdon, 2018). Keeping this in view, health authorities and organizations working in every country in the Global South should devise their own guidelines. Though some countries, for instance India, have recently developed local code of ethics, their recommendations look similar to the WHO resource except for adding a new item: “use photographs, video footage, or social media links” (Raj et al., 2022).

We recommend that as religion is highly entangled in people’s lives in the countries of the Global South (Rakodi, 2019), Hindu, Christian, and Muslim-majority countries (which constitute the majority of the population in the Global South) should highlight the prohibition of suicide in their respective religion’s teachings as a prevention strategy in the proposed local media guidelines. Similarly, local resources can emphasize the cultural and religious sensitivity surrounding suicide, thereby avoiding potentially harmful portrayals or stigmatization. These guidelines can offer direction to reporters in particular and media outlets in general on how captions such as “Frenchman jumps to death at Makkah’s Grand Mosque” and “man jumps to death from temple tower” may affect the religious sentiments of individuals in Hindu and Muslim-majority countries in the Global South.

The guidelines issued by the WHO and other Global Northern organizations often stem from studies carried out and published in the languages of Western countries. This can lead journalists in the Global South to believe that suicide is a problem limited to specific regions. However, as research on media-suicide contagion in Global Southern contexts expands, the proposed locally developed guidelines need to integrate data, and empirical evidence, and be published in the local languages of countries within the Global South.

The WHO guidelines recommend not to use such expressions and phrases as “suicide epidemic”, ‘“unsuccessful suicide”, “successful suicide”, “committed suicide”, and “political suicide”, they seem recommended for English newspapers only. Local newspapers of Global Southern countries use their own expressions and words to report cases of suicide, that can be better described to counter in locally devised guidelines only. This further helps ensure that reporting standards are understood and adhered to by those directly involved in media coverage.

Similarly, to enhance the Papageno effect, ultimately promoting hope and encouraging individuals at risk of suicide to seek help, proposed local resources should advise media professionals to include stories of survivors from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds in countries of the Global South (Niederkrotenthaler & Till, 2019). This can help cultivate a sense of solidarity and connection, promoting “we feelings” among media recipients.
Despite numerous studies highlighting the connection between fictional media, such as drama and film, and subsequent increases in suicides, most available resources focus solely on news media (Niederkrotenthaler & Till, 2019). This is despite calls from public health agencies, as well as filmmakers and producers, for guidance on depicting suicide in fictional films and TV series.

Interestingly, while organizations from Global North like Mindframe in Australia, the Samaritans in the UK, and the US National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention offer resources, the WHO has yet to develop specific guidelines for the consumption of global entertainment industries. Given compelling empirical evidence that dramas and films from many countries in the Global South prominently feature suicide-related content, local health authorities must collaborate with the entertainment sector to formulate tailored recommendations for portraying suicide in national fictional media.

As suicide is covered by crime reporters in the Global South (Armstrong et al., 2021. Kamboh & Ittefaq, 2019), lastly, we recommend that, where possible, suicide should be covered by or with the input of health reporters who are best positioned to contextualize suicide within the broader topic of mental health.

References
Armstrong, G., Vijayakumar, L., Cherian, A., Krishnaswamy, K., & Pathare, S. (2021). Indian media professionals’ perspectives regarding the role of media in suicide prevention and receptiveness to media guidelines: a qualitative study. BMJ Open, 11(5), e047166. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-047166

Babajani, F., Salari, N., Hosseinian-Far, A., Abdoli, N., Mosafer, H., Heidarian, P., & Mohammadi, M. (2023). Prevalence of suicide attempts across the African continent: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 103878. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2023.103878

Dávila-Cervantes, C. A. (2022). Suicide burden in Latin America, 1990–2019: findings from the global burden of disease study 2019. Public Health, 205, 28-36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2022.01.014 

Ittefaq, M., Kamboh, S.A., Iqbal, A., Iftikhar, U., Abwao, M., & Arif, R. (2023). Understanding public reactions to state security officials' suicide cases in online news comments. Death Studies, 47(4), 499-508. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2022.2101074

Kamboh, S. A., & Ittefaq, M. (2019). Newspaper suicide reporting in a Muslim country: Analysis of violations and compliance with international guidelines. Journal of Media Ethics, 34(1), 2-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/23736992.2019.1568252

Ju, Y., Scherr, S., Arendt, F., You, M., & Prieler, M. (2024). Little strokes fell big oaks: How repeated recommendations for suicide reporting drive the quality of suicide news in South Korea. OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying. Online First Article. https://doi.org/10.1177/00302228241228007 

Mishara, B. L., & Dargis, L. (2019). Systematic comparison of recommendations for safe messaging about suicide in public communications. Journal of Affective Disorders, 244, 124–154. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JAD.2018.09.031

Niederkrotenthaler, T., & Till, B. (2019). Suicide and the media: From Werther to Papageno effects–A selective literature review. Suicidologi, 24(2).
https://doi.org/10.5617/suicidologi.7398 

Osafo, J., Akotia, C. S., Andoh-Arthur, J., & Puplampu, B. M. (2021). The role of religious leaders in suicide Prevention in Ghana. A qualitative analysis. Pastoral Psychology, 70(5), 525-539. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-021-00955-4

Raj, S., Ghosh, A., Sharma, B., & Goel, S. (2022). Do online media adhere to the responsible suicide reporting guidelines? A cross sectional study from India. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 68(1), 44-54. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020764020975797

Rakodi, C. (2019). Religion and society in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. Routledge. 

Shoib, S., Armiya, A. Y. U., Nahidi, M., Arif, N., & Saeed, F. (2022). Suicide in Muslim world and way forward. Health Science Reports, 5(4), e665-n/a. https://doi.org/10.1002/hsr2.665

Sinyor, M., Ekstein, D., Prabaharan, N., Fiksenbaum, L., Vandermeer, C., Schaffer, A., Pirkis, J., Heisel, M. J., Goldstein, B. I., Redelmeier, D. A., Taylor, P., & Niederkrotenthaler, T. (2024). Changes in media reporting quality and suicides following national media engagement on responsible reporting of suicide in Canada. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. Online First Article. https://doi.org/10.1177/07067437231223334

Snowdon, J. (2018). Differences between patterns of suicide in East Asia and the West. The importance of sociocultural factors. Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 37, 106-111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2018.08.019

Vijayakumar, L., & John, S. (2018). Is Hinduism ambivalent about suicide? International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 64(5), 443-449. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020764018777523

World Health Organization. (2023). Preventing suicide: A resource for media professionals, 2023 update. World Health Organization.

 

Shafiq Ahmad Kamboh is faculty member at the School of Communication Studies, University of the Punjab, Pakistan. Muhammad Ittefaq is a faculty member at the School of Communication Studies James Madison University, United States.

Photo by Vitaliy Rigalovsky on Unsplash