Media

For media enquiries:

Paula Taylor
Development Manager, Communications, Marketing & Information
DDI: 09 300 7025
Mobile:021 300 594
paula@mentalhealth.org.nz

Sophia Graham
Communications Officer
DDI: 09 300 4425
Mobile:021 740 454
sophia@mentalhealth.org.nz

What you can do to help prevent suicide

Some types of media reporting and portrayal of suicide can increase suicide risk for vulnerable people.

Enhancing safe reporting and portrayal of suicide by the media can make an important contribution to suicide prevention, and is one of the Government's priority goals as part of the New Zealand Suicide Prevention Strategy.  

Reporting about suicide safely

Reporting Suicide: A resource for the media is a new resource to help journalists, editors and commentators to tell suicide-related stories responsibly and effectively. Published in late 2011, it has been adopted by the Media Freedom Committee and the Newspaper Publishers’ Association.

We have begun publishing a series of articles as part of SPINZ Newsletter, to explore the resources' reporting recommendations in detail.

• Introduction: Go, Think, Stop: a quick guide for reporters
• Avoid simple explanations: looks at the recommendation to avoid reporting simplistic causes for suicide, for example by attributing the death to a single issue like text bullying or unemployment.
• Subscribe to the Newsletter to receive email notifications of new articles in this series.