title: Suicide reporting within British newspapers' arts coverage.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Many suicide prevention strategies promote media guidelines on suicide reporting, given evidence that irresponsible reporting of suicide can influence imitative suicidal behavior. Due to limited resources, monitoring of guideline adherence has tended to focus on news outputs, with a risk of neglecting other journalistic content.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To determine whether British newspapers' arts coverage adheres to media guidelines on suicide reporting.
  
  
  METHODS
  Purposive sampling was used to capture current national practice on suicide reporting within newspapers' arts coverage of exhibitions. Recent major UK exhibitions by artists who had died by suicide were identified: Kirchner, Rothko, Gorky, and Van Gogh. Content analysis of all UK national newspaper coverage of these exhibitions was performed to measure the articles' adherence to widely accepted media guidelines.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In all, 68 newspaper reviews satisfied inclusion criteria, with 100% failing to show full adherence to media guidelines: 21% used inappropriate language; 38% provided explicit descriptions of the suicide; 7% employed simplistic explanations for suicide triggers; 27% romanticized the suicide; and 100% omitted information on sources of support.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  British newspapers' arts coverage of exhibitions deviates considerably from media guidelines on the reporting of suicide. The findings suggest scope to improve journalists' awareness of the importance of this component of suicide prevention strategies.
authors.affiliation: <location>UCL Division of Psychiatry, University College London, UK</location>
authors.forename: Alexandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pitman
authors.affiliation: <location>UCL Department of Primary Care & Population Health, University College London Royal Free Campus, London, UK</location>
authors.forename: Fiona
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Stevenson
mesh_terms: D001154:Art; D019983:Guideline Adherence; D006801:Humans; D007100:Imitative Behavior; D009524:Newspapers as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D006113:United Kingdom; D000092864:Suicide Prevention
keywords: content analysis; imitative behavior; media guidelines; suicide prevention; suicide reporting