“How it is reported makes no difference”

This is the myth that most directly shaped how this site is built, so it is worth being explicit about the evidence rather than simply asserting a policy.

The effect runs in both directions

Harmful coverage is followed by rises. Prominent reporting that names a method, dramatises a death, or presents suicide as an understandable response to a setback is followed by measurable increases — concentrated among people who resemble the person who died, and in the method described. It has been found across many countries and many decades.

Responsible coverage is followed by falls. Less widely known, and more important. Reporting that focuses on people coming through crisis, that names where help is available, and that avoids method detail is associated with reductions. Coverage is not merely a risk to be minimised; done well it is a protective intervention.

What actually carries the risk

Not the word "suicide". The specific ingredients:

• Method detail. The most consistently harmful single element.
• Prominence and repetition. Front pages, rolling coverage, sustained attention to one death.
• Presenting it as effective — as a release, a solution, a way of finally being understood or of getting back at someone.
• A simple, single cause. "He did it because he lost his job" is almost always false, and it hands a template to anyone who has just lost theirs.
• Location detail, which turns a place into a destination.
• Romanticising or memorialising in a way that makes the death look like it achieved something.

What is protective

• Naming that help exists, and where — specifically, with numbers
• Accounts from people who came through
• Making clear that crises are usually temporary and treatable
• Reporting the complexity honestly, without a tidy cause

Why this page exists on a site with no newsroom

Because "the media" is no longer a separate profession.

If you post, run a group, moderate a community, make videos, or write a newsletter, this applies to you. A single widely-shared post naming a method reaches more people than most local newspapers.

The one rule worth carrying: never describe how. Everything else is judgement; that one is not.

If you are covering a death

The major guidelines — from Samaritans in the UK, and equivalents in most countries — are short, free, and specific. They take about twenty minutes to read and are written by people who have looked at what happens afterwards.

If you take nothing else: no method, no location, no single cause, and a helpline number in the piece itself rather than at the bottom of the page.