When safe is not enough An exploration of improving guidelines on reporting mental illness and suicide

Mental illness, coping, and suicide-related stigma are influenced by social discourse. Legacy, digital and social media create and amplify exist- ing attitudes and contribute to mindsets and behaviour, including suicidality. While there have been guidelines for reporting suicide and related constructs internationally for several decades, the focus has been on safe language and word choices that highlight problems. However, these guidelines have not prevented deaths by suicide and have contributed to conflating the prevalence of catastrophising normal unpleasant emotions and social problems as mental illness. With calls in government reviews and by consumers for a greater focus on consumer-centred suicide prevention and COVID-19 highlighting the importance of biopsychosocial stressors to feelings, consideration of other approaches to and inclusions in media guidelines are timely and prudent. In this paper, we explored how a consumer-centred coping approach would augment existing media guidelines to influence community attitudes and behaviours in a way that contributes to health and wellbeing, as well as suicide prevention. Thirteen guidelines are provided with examples for each to guide changes in practice. By adopting these guidelines, journalistic outputs are more likely to be consistent with contemporary understandings of health and wellbeing.