Julia Stöber Interventionsmöglichkeiten in der medialen Berichterstattung über Suizidalität

About this book

On the one hand, media reports on suicidality involve the danger of a detailed, positive, or even glorifying portrayal of suicidal behaviour, which increases the probability of imitation by susceptible individuals. On the other hand, there is the chance of increasing people’s awareness of suicidality, psychiatric illness, and help offers. If journalists of regional daily newspapers are open to suicide-preventive interventions (distribution of media recommendations, conduction of workshops, comments after irresponsible reports and personal contact in order to clarify specific questions) and if an improved reporting style corresponds to a reduction of suicidal behaviour, should be examined in the context of the fifth-level-intervention of the Optimizing Suicide Prevention Programs and their Implementation in Europe (OSPI-Europe) project in four European countries: Germany, Hungary, Ireland, and Portugal. For this purpose, a design with the two factors “intervention vs. control region” and “baseline vs. intervention period” was chosen. Up to now, only few coding sheets measuring the content and form of media reports on suicidality provide psychometric properties. Within the frame of a subproject of the OSPI-Europe study a comprehensive coding sheet for the assessment of media reporting was developed and its reliability examined. Newspaper reports on suicidality of four European intervention and control regions were analysed by means of the coding sheet. The frequency of suicidal behaviour in the four intervention and control regions was assessed from the baseline to the end of the intervention period. Hence, the present study represents the first systematic assessment of media reporting on suicidality on European level.