Guidelines

This guide provides people engaged in suicide prevention with the tools necessary to serve as effective media spokespersons and to generate media coverage in order to create awareness of this important issue. It can help them to understand the needs of the news media as part of an effective media outreach program.

This guide helps ensure that mayors and municipal leaders have the information they need to address the behavioral health needs of their community’s children, adults, and families by supporting the prevention and treatment of mental illness and recovery from mental illness.

This brief manual explores how media accounts can actually serve as a suicide prevention tool by: assisting news professionals to report responsibly and accurately; using a media request for information as an opportunity to influence the contents of the story; emphasizing the importance of listing available community resources for individuals at-risk and describing what is being done to promote safety for vulnerable individuals in the aftermath of a suicide; and warning against the aspects of news coverage that may promote copycat suicides.

A 6-minute video, from stopbullying.gov, discusses approaches to avoid in bullying prevention and response, drawing on the best evidence and expert opinion. It cautions against overstating the suicide-bullying relationship and offers messaging guidance for talking about bullying and suicide.

A list of research articles on the website of the organization Peers for Progress. It includes recent research, review papers, and featured reports.

The Recommendations are meant to assist bloggers in blogging about suicide safely, and ultimately maximize the effectiveness of the communicators’ efforts and reduce the risk of harmful effects of unsafe messaging on suicide.

The recommendations address how media covers an incident where a person (or a small group) shoots multiple others in a public setting. The tragedies at Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora and Orlando are examples of mass shootings. These recommendations are not intended to address gang violence or murder­ suicide (i.e. intimate partner violence).

Released in 2011 and updated in 2019, the Recommendations for Reporting on Suicide were developed by leading experts in suicide prevention and in collaboration with several international suicide prevention and public health organizations, schools of journalism, media organizations and key journalists as well as Internet safety experts. The research-based recommendations include suggestions for online media, message boards, bloggers, and “citizen journalists.”

Talking points on the economy, unemployment, and suicide prepared in November 2008. URLs updated in June of 2012.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), as national leads for 988, developed this webpage of resources and information to help states, territories, tribes, mental health and substance use disorder professionals, and others prepare for the July 16, 2022 transition to 988.