How does news coverage of suicide affect suicidal behaviour at a high-frequency location? A 7-year time series analysis

Introduction News reporting of suicide can have a significant influence on suicidal behaviour in the general population, especially following the death of a well-known individual. By comparison, the impact of reporting on suicides at well-known, ‘high-frequency’ locations is less well understood. We investigated the relationship between news coverage of suicide and incidents at a high-frequency coastal location in the UK over a 7-year period.

Methods We analysed bidirectional associations (with daily and weekly lags) and Granger causality between suicide-related news in the UK (n=38 595, of which 789 focused on cliff locations) and suspected suicides (n=278) and crisis interventions (n=3050) at the site between 1 January 2017 and 31 December 2023. Separate subanalyses explored associations with repeat coverage and with headlines featuring explicit location/method details.

Results While coverage of incidents at the study site and other coastal locations represents a small and decreasing proportion of all UK news of suicide, 51% of all cliff-related news focused on the study site, often explicitly identified in the story’s headline (81%). There were significant but small (r<0.3) correlations between the volume of news coverage (particularly when method-specific and location-specific) and suicidal behaviour at the site, with fatalities increasing in the immediate aftermath of reporting. This effect was strongest in 2018–2019 (which had the greatest volume of reporting and repeat coverage) but failed to reach significance in 2020–2023, when there were fewer reports, less repeat coverage and no headlines referring to multiple deaths at the site.

Conclusions Findings underscore the importance of continued efforts to monitor and improve the quality of news and other media portrayals of suicide. Follow-up studies, including qualitative research with people with lived/living experiences of suicide, could further explore how different types of news stories and wider narratives might contribute to increases—and potentially decreases—in suicides at high-frequency locations.

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