September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month.
This year, the department of Health and Human Services released a National Strategy for Suicide Prevention. The 2024 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention is a new 10-year, comprehensive, whole-of-society approach to suicide prevention that provides concrete recommendations for addressing gaps in the suicide prevention field.
One focus of this strategy is to implement research-informed suicide prevention communication activities in diverse populations using best practices from communication science.
Safe messaging guidelines seek to protect audiences from messages that inadvertently increase suicide risk. Certain types of public messaging about suicide or lived experiences of suicide thoughts and attempts can increase risk, even if they are shared in a well-meaning way. Decades of research show unsafe messaging can contribute to real-world increases in suicide attempts and deaths—a phenomenon known as the Werther effect (Domaradzki, 2021; Etzersdorfer et al., 2004; Niederkrotenthaler et al., 2010; Niederkrotenthaler and Till, 2019).
Examples of unsafe messaging practices include:
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- Romanticizing suicide
- Describing suicide as an acceptable or inevitable result of life struggles
- Providing graphic descriptions of suicide
- Using disrespectful language, such as the phrase “committed suicide,” which can connote a sin or a crime
On the other hand, safe messaging guidelines also provide evidence-informed recommendations for ensuring communication on suicide is not only safe but beneficial (known as the Papageno effect). Safe messaging includes the following:
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- Describing suicide as largely preventable
- Emphasizing that suicide is a complex issue with many contributing risk and protective factors that can be addressed
- Using respectful language such as the phrase “died by suicide”.
If you are interested in learning more about suicide prevention communication, please register for our QPR Training on September 26th at https://tinyurl.com/QPRCrescoSept2024.