Cost‐effectiveness of media reporting guidelines for the prevention of suicide

Abstract

Introduction: Media guidelines for the responsible reporting of suicide are a recognized universal suicide prevention intervention. While implemented in numerous countries, including Australia, little is known about whether they are cost-effective. We aimed to determine the cost-effectiveness of Mindframe, the national initiative implementing media guidelines in Australia. Method:We conducted a modelled economic evaluation (5-year time-horizon) incorporating two types of economic analysis: (i) return-on-investment (ROI) comparing estimated cost savings from the intervention to the total intervention cost, and (ii) cost-effectiveness analysis comparing the net intervention costs to health outcomes: suicide deaths prevented and quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs). We also included uncertainty analyses to propagate parameter uncertainty and sensitivity analyses to test the robustness of the model outputs to changes in input parameters and assumptions. Results:The estimated ROI ratio for the main analysis was 94:1

Changes in Media Reporting Quality and Suicides Following National Media Engagement on Responsible Reporting of Suicide in Canada: Changements de la Qualité des reportages dans les médias sur les suicides suite à l’engagement des médias nationaux à la déclaration responsable du suicide au Canada

“… 38 , 39 Australia's media guidelines were estimated to prevent more than 100 suicides over a 5-year period and appeared highly cost-effective. 40 Guidelines had been disseminated to the Austrian press since 1987, and the original study that coined the Papageno effect showed that they presented Papageno narratives in 9% of their suicide-related articles in 2005. 14 In contrast, in 2020–2021, after several years of our media engagement initiative which placed a heavy emphasis on encouraging Papageno narratives, the Canadian press reported on such narratives in fewer than 4% of articles.…”

#chatsafe 2.0. updated guidelines to support young people to communicate safely online about self-harm and suicide: A Delphi expert consensus study

“…Guidelines to improve communication by mainstream media are a widely accepted and cost-effective suicide prevention strategy [17][18][19], but these do not directly address the impacts of social media and are not designed with young people in mind. To address this, in 2018 we conducted a Delphi expert consensus study to inform the development of the #chatsafe guidelines, the world's first guidelines designed to facilitate safe online communication about suicide among young people [20].…”

Letters to the Editor: Letter to the Editor regarding ‘Is the narrative the message? The relationship between suicide-related narratives in media reports and subsequent suicides’

“…Understanding the power of the narrative has led to the development of media reporting guidelines around the world. Australia was one of the earliest countries to establish national media guidelines on reporting suicide and other mental health issues with the development of the Mindframe guidelines (Flego et al, 2022). These guidelines emphasise the importance of responsible reporting of suicide, including avoiding sensationalism and graphic descriptions of suicide methods.…”

“…There has been a positive uptake of these guidelines in the local media landscape, leading to a noticeable improvement in the quality of new media reports when tackling the fine balance of public interest against public harm (Pirkis et al, 2009). Media reporting guidelines have been found to be an effective population-level intervention for suicide prevention as well as cost-effective in the Australian setting (Flego et al, 2022).…”