My Brother Died By Suicide – I Know How Much Words Matter
On May 29 2004, two days after my final third-year exam at university, my big brother Stephen died by suicide. He was 25 years old.
Unfortunately, in the 16 years that have followed Stephen’s death, we don’t seem to have found the answer to this particular conundrum yet – how do you help someone who feels they have nothing left to live for? In fact deaths by suicide actually rose by 10.9% in the UK in 2018, according to figures published by Samaritans. We do, however, seem to talk about it more – which can only be a good thing, right?
Not always it transpires, and the media has a particularly big role to play in this. Characteristics of reporting suicide can, for example, lead to imitative behaviour and particularly where celebrity deaths are concerned.
The guilt and shame associated with bereavement by suicide is its own very particular beast.
In fact Samaritans publish guidelines on this to prevent the occurrence of further tragedies – guidelines immediately flouted by the likes of the Daily Mail and The Sun, which chose to ignore advice not to publish methods of suicide in headlines, when reporting on the inquest of Caroline Flack on Wednesday. The Sun – the same paper that was quick to publish pieces by senior journalists espousing heartbreak at the death of their friend last weekend and attributing it to treatment by employers and the Crown Prosecution Service. The Sun, the paper which runs an ongoing suicide prevention campaign You’re Not Alone.
Other outlets also chose to ignore these guidelines, though The Sun, which last weekend deleted a bullying and harassing article about Flack published in the run up to her death, reeks of a particularly odious hypocrisy.
But it’s not just the tabloids running pieces like this that fuel further tragedies and exacerbate those already experienced by grieving families. Straight off the bat were the Twitter users, ready to condemn the tabloid press, the CPS, and, curiously, even ITV presenter Ant McPartlin...
