Suicide is not painless

By David Momphard
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, Oct 09, 2005, Page 17

When famous comedian Ni Min-jan (倪敏然) ended his life in April this year, the soap opera began. News crews raced to the Ilan County mountainside where his body was found to film the tree from which he had hung himself. They dug up photos of him leaving the Toucheng (頭城) train station -- the last time he was captured on film. They tailed his wife and children, hounding them with questions.

They tailed the Chinese actress Xia Yi (夏禕), with whom he was reported to have had an affair. Anyone with any connection to Ni was considered fair game. His suicide stayed in the news until a different suicide -- of a couple who met over the Internet and made a pact to end their lives -- took its place.

Taiwan's suicide rate is one of its most pressing social issues. It's also one of its most highly publicized. But some say the nature of local media coverage may actually exacerbate the problem rather than helping alleviate it.

"The bigger problem is that suicide as a social phenomenon deserves media attention because it's a huge public health issue," said Wang Shih-fan (王石番), professor and chairman of the Graduate Institute of Communication at Fo Guang University. "The public needs to be aware of the warning signs of depression, both for their own sake and for the sake of their loved ones, and to know where they can get help."

WHO Guidelines for suicide coverage in the media ■ Sensational coverage of suicides should be avoided. ■ Detailed descriptions of the method used and how the method was procured should be avoided. ■ Suicide should not be reported as unexplainable or in a simplistic way. ■ Suicide should not be depicted as a method of coping with personal problems such as bankruptcy, failure to pass an examination or sexual abuse. ■ Reports should take account of the impact of suicides on family and other survivors. ■ Suicide victims should not be viewed as martyrs, instead, the emphasis should be on mourning the person's death. ■ Describing the physical consequences of non-fatal suicide attempts (brain damage, paralysis) can act as a deterrent. SOURCE: World Health Organization

The balancing act, Wang said, is how the media can cover suicide without sensationalizing it? There seems to be "very little coverage on suicide as a public health issue."

Suicide been one of the top-10 causes of death in Taiwan for the past nine years. Over the past 10 years, the nation's suicide rate has increased from seven out of every 10,000 persons to 15.3 out of every 10,000 persons. While once the largest age bracket was those between 45 and 64, it's now those between 25 and 44. For people between ages 15 and 24, suicide is the second leading cause of death.

Last year, a reported 3,468 people took their own life, or one every two-and-a-half hours. Authorities point out, however, that suicide rates are thought to be underestimated by 20 percent to 25 percent among the elderly and 6 percent to 12 percent among other age groups, with many likely suicides wrongly reported as accidents or where the cause of death was listed as "unknown."

Medical worry that suicide is becoming more ritualized, a phenomenon they attribute to the sensationalized coverage of suicide in the media. In 1998, when a woman in Hong Kong killed herself by sealing her apartment with tape and burning charcoal until she died of asphyxiation, it became one of the top-three methods used by those attempting to kill themselves.

Several Internet sites dedicated to suicide methods have sprung up. Many even have bulletin boards where those

wanting to end their lives can find like-minded people. More

upsettingly, so-called family suicides have become

increasingly common. Either to take revenge against a spouse, or out of the belief that it would be cruel to orphan their children, some suicidal parents first murder their children before taking their own life. There have been 78 such cases in Taiwan in the past decade, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at National Taiwan University. Half of those cases have occurred in the past three years alone.

Wang among several academics and civil groups who, in August, proposed a set of guidelines for news coverage of suicide which they hoped local media outlets would follow. The guidelines they proposed follow closely the guidelines promoted by the World Health Organization on responsible coverage of suicides in the news (see factbox).

Calls several medial outlets inquiring about their guidelines for covering suicides went unanswered. But one person, a cameraman for a satellite news gathering unit who asked to remain anonymous, said that guidelines, if they exist, aren't put into practice. Instead, he and other cameramen are

pressured to get the most "interesting" images.

"It's deemed `newsworthy' if there was something about [the suicide] that was unusual," the cameraman said. "If it was an old man who took sleeping pills we don't go. If it was an Internet suicide or a family suicide or especially a celebrity, we're told to go. We're not told what specific images to get, but there's a tacit understanding that we should try to get images that other stations won't have."

But academics and media watch groups say even aspects of suicide coverage that might not be considered bad taste have been shown to adversely affect suicide rates in the immediate aftermath of the coverage.

Research that heavy reporting of a celebrity suicide can increase suicide rates by as much as 14 percent. After celebrity Leslie Cheung (張國榮) committed suicide in Hong Kong, that city's suicide rate rose 18 percent the following month. Following the discovery of Ni's body on May 1, 14 people committed suicide in a single day, a huge increase over the daily average of 9.3 suicides. The surge was enough to cause health authorities to hold a press conference the next day urging the public to treasure life.

Conversely, a study in Vienna showed that, after media there launched a self-restraint campaign and stopped showing graphic and sensational descriptions of suicide, after six months the city's suicide rate dropped by 8 percent.

"What's upsetting is that suicide is a largely preventable problem," said Lyu Shu-yu (呂淑妤), secretary-general of the Healthy Life Alliance and another sponsor of the media guidelines proposed in August. "With proper attention to the warning signs of depression, and proper knowledge of where to seek help, people can save themselves or their loved ones."