Abstract

Objective

To examine the association between the publication and content of suicide-related media reports and actual suicide in Noord Brabant, a province of the Netherlands.

Method

Between April 2017 and March 2018, a retrospective cross-sectional observational study was conducted on suicide-related media reports and incident data regarding suicides. Linear regression, Mann-Whitney U and negative binomial regression analyses were conducted.

Results

In Noord-Brabant, a total of 352 people died from suicide during the observation period and 440 reports were identified by using the search terms “suicide”, “self-killing”, and “self-murder”. No associations between media reports and actual suicides were found for any of the analyses performed.

Conclusions

No indications were found for an association between media coverage of suicide and increases or decreases in actual suicides in Noord-Brabant. The descriptive statistics of this study reveal that the regional and national Dutch media are doing well with respect to not including elements in their reports that could encourage copycat behavior, such as simplifying, romanticizing or dramatizing. They could improve on including protective content, for example, providing supportive background information. A recommendation for further research is to evaluate causal relationships between media and actual suicide. A stepped wedge trial might be needed, as this provides an ethical research design to investigate this issue in a controlled setting. Also, in such a study, other variables influencing the decision to attempt suicide should be taken into account as much as possible.

中文翻译：

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自杀相关媒体报道与自杀之间的关联：一项横断面观察研究

摘要

客观的

调查荷兰北布拉班特省自杀相关媒体报道的出版和内容与实际自杀之间的关联。

方法

2017 年 4 月至 2018 年 3 月期间，对与自杀相关的媒体报道和自杀事件数据进行了回顾性横断面观察研究。进行了线性回归、Mann-Whitney U和负二项式回归分析。

结果

在北布拉邦省，观察期间共有 352 人死于自杀，使用搜索词“自杀”、“自杀”和“自我谋杀”确定了 440 份报告。对于所进行的任何分析，均未发现媒体报道与实际自杀之间存在关联。

结论

没有迹象表明媒体对自杀的报道与北布拉邦省实际自杀人数的增加或减少之间存在关联。这项研究的描述性统计数据显示，荷兰地区和国家媒体在不包括可能鼓励模仿行为的元素（例如简化、浪漫化或戏剧化）的报道中做得很好。他们可以改进包括保护性内容，例如，提供支持性背景信息。进一步研究的建议是评估媒体与实际自杀之间的因果关系。可能需要进行阶梯楔形试验，因为这提供了一种伦理研究设计，可以在受控环境中调查这个问题。此外，在这样的研​​究中，