Focus needs to shift in reporting suicide

By elliot.parker@age.co.nz

Wairarapa Times-Age·

18 Apr, 2014 06:00 PM4 mins to read

Jane Mills, Wairarapa District Health Board suicide prevention co-ordinator, said suicide reporting should focus on ways the victim could have received help.

Reporting on suicide needs to be done to educate the public while avoiding copycat behaviour, according to the Law Commission's recommendations.

Included in the recommendation, released last month, is a redrafting of sections 71-73 of the Coroner's Act.

Sections 71-73 state that media can not report on the suspected cause of death in New Zealand, even if the details of the case suggest clear suicide.

The only details able to be reported after the coroner's inquest are the name, address and occupation of the deceased, and the fact that the death was self-inflicted. The report suggests law reform is needed to allow for freedom of speech and to clear up uncertainty as to what can and can't be reported.

"The Commission is of the view - as is everybody we have consulted - that for one reason or another, the statutory provisions are not working at all or are working inadequately in some respects.

"There is much uncertainty about what exactly is restricted under the current provisions. Coroners themselves have had difficulty, and are even divided, on the interpretation of some aspects of the current statutory rules. The news media are also uncertain."

Jane Mills, from the suicide prevention team at Wairarapa District Health Board, said she had no "particular problem" with the media reporting suspected suicide but suggested that suicide reporting should focus on ways the victim could have received help.

"We need to focus on help seeking and what else they could have done," Ms Mills said.

She said the media needed to be trained to understand the effect they would have on bereaved families when reporting on suicide.

"It's very important to understand how to communicate with the bereaved.

"One way communication on the front page doesn't help ... vulnerable people may take away different messages than those that were intended," Ms Mills said.

"Whilst healthy members of the community are unlikely to be affected [by suicide reporting], people in despair are often unable to find alternative solutions to their problems."

Ms Mills said Australia was leading the way in training media on how to report on suicide in a balanced way that informed but didn't encourage copycat behaviour.

She said New Zealand media needed to follow suit in order to understand and report accurately on suicide without perpetuating the problem.

"Raising awareness on its own, increasing reporting, is not enough to change behaviours."

The Law Commission's recommendations stress this.

"Experts in suicide prevention generally agree that the evidence clearly shows some forms of reporting of suicide are associated with a subsequent copycat effect, but distinct debate remains around the circumstances under which that effect occurs."

The Law Commission is working through whether or not to rule against publishing specific details of a suicide.

"The international research is clear, however, that publishing the method of suicide carries a distinct risk factor. A judgment is required as to whether there is a sufficient risk to warrant a statutory prohibition of some kind, at least as to the manner of death."

A comment in a coroner's report after the suicide of a 14-year-old girl in Masterton suggested that public education around suicide is stifled in New Zealand by a view that it does more harm than good.

"The Court comments that public education in New Zealand about suicide has been inhibited over past years by a view that the less said about the subject, the better for the public good."

But the report suggested that this thinking was now changing.

"There is now a fast-developing understanding of the fact that awareness protects and ignorance endangers. The community is not protected against youth suicide by suppression of knowledge. It is imperilled."

The report also warned that the current law is being challenged by social media and needed to be changed to reflect modern ways of presenting news.

Ministry of Health statistics show that, from 2009-2011, Wairarapa had the highest rate of hospitalisations for intentional self-harm in the country.

In a five-year period from 2007 to 2011, Wairarapa had 17 suicides per 100,000 population compared with the national average of 11.3 suicides per 100,000 population.