#media-contagion-suicide-reporting

Sensational or repetitive media coverage of railway suicides triggers short-term imitative clusters, raising same-method deaths after coverage — e.g. a +44% daily increase in railway suicidal acts and a +117% overall rise after a celebrity railway death.

Work with news media to adopt and enforce responsible suicide-reporting guidelines — no method/location detail, no sensational or repetitive coverage, sign-posting help — to suppress imitative clusters, the best-evidenced non-physical rail-suicide intervention.

After a sharp rise in suicides on the Vienna subway following its opening, the Austrian Association for Suicide Prevention introduced media-reporting guidelines in 1987 and worked with journalists to change how subway s…