Does media reportage of farmer suicides spark copycat suicides?
“Irresponsible” media reports of suicides trigger imitative suicides, said this 2012 research paper from the Indian Journal of Psychiatry, placing at centrestage an issue the media rarely acknowledge.
The risk of imitative suicide is the highest during the first three days of reporting and levels off after about two weeks, said the study. Educated people, who have greater access to the media, are at greater risk.
“Yes, irresponsible media reporting triggers suicides, and India does need to have suicide-reporting guidelines for media houses,” said Patel, the psychiatrist.
There are several regions in India, such as Vidarbha and Bundelkhand, which gain notoriety for widespread suicides. There is evidence to suggest that the farm-suicide outbreak in India could indeed be a contagion, where farmers are committing copycat suicides, said a paper by Ravi, the Brookings India fellow.
“There is evidence that students get influenced by social media and commit suicides, but no such study has been conducted for farmers. However, we can generalise across demographics and conclude that media reporting does play a role (but not the only role) in triggering farmer suicides,” said Patel.
Currently, there are no national guidelines for reporting suicides in India by media houses, which often leads to irresponsible reporting, aggravated by pressure for ratings and readership. Globally, very few media organisations have in-house training for reporting on suicides.
Headline, a media-monitoring programme in Ireland, works to promote responsible and accurate coverage of mental-health and suicide-related issues within the Irish media.
“We use two media monitoring agencies and monitor about 35,000 articles annually and store the information in a database and analyze the articles against media guidelines,” said Jane Arigho, Media Project Coordinator, Headline. “We have created our own media guidelines and put them into a multimedia resource to assist media professionals and students.”
(Indiaspend. org is a non- profit)
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