ArticleBMJ public health2025
How does news coverage of suicide affect suicidal behaviour at a high-frequency location? A 7-year time series analysis.
Article in BMJ public health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Effectiveness of suicide means restriction: an overview of systematic reviews.BMJ mental health · 2025Pooled it
- Position paper on symbiotic intelligence in healthcare: Can AI help us better understand suicidal behavior and prevent suicide?Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Identification and Analysis of Critical Suicide Sites and Factors in Castilla-La Mancha (2020-2024): Forensic and Healthcare Collaboration for Prevention.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Suicide Prevention Measures at High-Risk Locations: A Goal-Directed Motivation Perspective.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Introduction: News reporting of suicide can have a significant influence on suicidal behaviour in the general population, especially following the death of a well-known individual. By comparison, the impact of reporting on suicides at well-known, 'high-frequency' locations is less well understood. We investigated the relationship between news coverage of suicide and incidents at a high-frequency coastal location in the UK over a 7-year period. Methods: We analysed bidirectional associations (with daily and weekly lags) and Granger causality between suicide-related news in the UK (n=38 595, of which 789 focused on cliff locations) and suspected suicides (n=278) and crisis interventions (n=3050) at the site between 1 January 2017 and 31 December 2023. Separate subanalyses explored associations with repeat coverage and with headlines featuring explicit location/method details. Results: While coverage of incidents at the study site and other coastal locations represents a small and decreasing proportion of all UK news of suicide, 51% of all cliff-related news focused on the study site, often explicitly identified in the story's headline (81%). There were significant but small (r<0.3) correlations between the volume of news coverage (particularly when method-specific and location-specific) and suicidal behaviour at the site, with fatalities increasing in the immediate aftermath of reporting. This effect was strongest in 2018-2019 (which had the greatest volume of reporting and repeat coverage) but failed to reach significance in 2020-2023, when there were fewer reports, less repeat coverage and no headlines referring to multiple deaths at the site. Conclusions: Findings underscore the importance of continued efforts to monitor and improve the quality of news and other media portrayals of suicide. Follow-up studies, including qualitative research with people with lived/living experiences of suicide, could further explore how different types of news stories and wider narratives might contribute to increases-and potentially decreases-in suicides at high-frequency locations.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.