Discussion News articles posting suicide prevention information, why?

[TAW122]

I don't know why news articles, particularly if there are celebrity suicides or people who have killed themselves due to just not wanting to deal with life.

Here is an article of someone who was once able-bodied, but due to an accident, became a quadriplegic and his quality of life went down.

Another article with the stupid suicide prevention information posted at the end of the article.

Also, this article.

Do news articles and news reporters post suicide prevention information because it's obligatory? Do they just do it to virtue signal (similar to the people who copy and paste suicide prevention garbage on social media)? I don't understand the reasoning behind it.

 

[Sayo]

Sort of both.

Media guidelines and practices have varied on reporting suicide. Previously it was considered progressive not to report on suicide at all for fear of the copycat effect. Nowadays they want to 'destigmatise' suicide (look how well that's going) by reporting on it in cases where they think it could be informative, raise awareness, or have some sort of positive angle (in practice this just ends up being an excuse for clickbait half the time). But things like 'call the suicide hotline if you need help' are considered cursory safety measures in case people end up having ideation sparked by reading the article, and probably part of ethical reporting. So basically it's for the exact same reasons that people do it on social media, which is a combination of virtue signalling and it being socially obligatory.

I know it's very silly since suicide hotlines aren't really useful, probably leave some people worse off, and cover up people's helplessness rather than forcing them to confront it.

I've done surveys for psych studies before and they always have a warning on them -- because they can trigger PTSD, ideation, etc. -- that there will be distressing content along certain lines (which I imagine does more use) and if you are suicidal to call the hotline, etc. I am pretty sure this is part of how they make their study meet ethics standards too.

 

[TAW122]

Sort of both.

Media guidelines and practices have varied on reporting suicide. Previously it was considered progressive not to report on suicide at all for fear of the copycat effect. Nowadays they want to 'destigmatise' suicide (look how well that's going) by reporting on it in cases where they think it could be informative, raise awareness, or have some sort of positive angle (in practice this just ends up being an excuse for clickbait half the time). But things like 'call the suicide hotline if you need help' are considered cursory safety measures in case people end up having ideation sparked by reading the article, and probably part of ethical reporting. So basically it's for the exact same reasons that people do it on social media, which is a combination of virtue signalling and it being socially obligatory.

I know it's very silly since suicide hotlines aren't really useful, probably leave some people worse off, and cover up people's helplessness rather than forcing them to confront it.

I've done surveys for psych studies before and they always have a warning on them -- because they can trigger PTSD, ideation, etc. -- that there will be distressing content along certain lines (which I imagine does more use) and if you are suicidal to call the hotline, etc. I am pretty sure this is part of how they make their study meet ethics standards too.

Thanks for the thorough explanation and yeah, I never really thought about the other reasonings behind it.