Media guidelines on safe suicide-related reporting are within the suicide prevention armamentarium. However, implementation issues beleaguer real-world practice. This study evaluated the perspectives of the Malaysian media community, persons with lived experience of suicidal behavior (PLE), and mental health professionals (MHP) on suicide-related reporting in terms of the impact, strategies, challenges, and the implementation of guidelines on safe reporting. Three focus group discussions of purposively sampled Malaysian media practitioners (n = 8), PLE (n = 6), and MHP (n = 7) were audio-recorded, transcribed, coded and thematically analyzed. Inclusion criteria were: English fluency, no clinical depression or suicidal ideation (current), no recent previous suicide attempts or suicide bereavement. Three major themes emerged: (1) Unsafe Reporting; (2) Impact; and (3) Safe Reporting. Most described current reporting as unsafe by being potentially triggering to media users and may contribute to contagion effect. Positive impacts identified included raised awareness toward suicide and its prevention. Unsafe reporting was attributed to inadequate awareness, knowledge, and guidance, lack of empathy and accountability, job-related factors, popularity-seeking, lack of monitoring and governance, and information source(s) with unsafe content. Majority agreed on how suicide stories should be framed to produce a safe report. The media community diverged on how detailed a suicide story should be. Safe reporting challenges included difficulties in balancing beneficial versus harmful details, social media ubiquity and its citizen reporters. Participants suggested these safe reporting strategies: stakeholder engagement, educational approaches, improving governance and surveillance, and guidelines revision. Most acknowledged the relevance of guidelines but were unaware of the existence of local guidelines. Implementation challenges included the dilemma in balancing media industry needs vis-à-vis safe reporting requirements, stakeholder engagement difficulties and social media regulation. There is poor awareness regarding safe suicide-related reporting across all groups. PLE and MHP were negatively impacted by current unsafe messaging which aggravated trauma and grief reactions. Postvention support gaps for mental health professionals were highlighted. Safe reporting promotion strategies should include stakeholder engagement to increase awareness on minimizing Werther and maximizing Papageno effects. Strategic re-examination and dissemination of local media guidelines to address new media issues, and effective surveillance mechanisms, are crucial in sustainable improvement of safe reporting practices.

BACKGROUND: Information on the effects of initial biomass concentration on bioregeneration rate and efficiency is lacking as many of the bioregeneration studies were conducted at constant initial biomass concentration. The objectives of this study are: (i) to develop kinetic models incorporating adsorption, desorption, biodegradation and the irreversibility of adsorption in describing the bioregeneration of granular activated carbon (GAC) loaded with 4-chlorophenol (4-CP); and (ii) to investigate the effect of initial biomass concentration on the rate and efficiency of bioregeneration of 4-CP-loaded GAC in simultaneous adsorption and biodegradation processes.RESULTS: The bioregeneration model with Haldane biodegradation kinetics gave a better fit (R 2 > 0.956) than the model with first-order biodegradation kinetics (R 2 > 0.805) to the experimental data. Values of the rate constant of desorption generated from the models showed that there was no observed effect of varying biomass concentration on the bioregeneration rate. The efficiency study revealed no observed effect of varying biomass concentration on the bioregeneration efficiency provided there was no inhibition effect due to 4-CP. CONCLUSIONS: Change in the initial biomass concentration had no observed effect on the bioregeneration rate and efficiency, if there was no inhibitory effect due to the substrate in the latter case.

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Results of the interaction of process variables and the consequential mixture of phenolic compounds adsorption study are expected to shed brighter light on the wastewater treatment applications. Accordingly, the aims of this research are to model and optimize the process variables which impinged on the simultaneous adsorption of phenol and 4-chlorophenol (4-CP) in the binary solution by spherical activated carbon (SAC). Batch assessments were designed using response surface methodology software. The process variables, namely SAC dosage and pH were varied over the 1.50-3.50 g/L and 4.00-9.00 g/L ranges, respectively, were experimented. The analysis of variance results showed the significant models could precisely predict the percentage removals of phenol and 4-CP, indicating models reliability. The interaction of process variables was inconspicuous for the case of phenol adsorption. However, increasing the pH would deteriorate the 4-CP adsorption which was partially offset by raising the SAC dosage. Considering the environmental benefits, optimization taken place at the SAC dosage and pH of 3.50 g/L and 7.60 g/L, respectively, was selected. By employing the optimized conditions of SAC dosage of 3.50 g/L at pH 7.60 for the adsorption process, the predicted phenol and 4-CP removal percentages were found to be 85.4 % (73.1 mg/g) and 96.2 % (82.6 mg/g), respectively, which were in agreement with the experimental runs.

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