Lynch: We need to look at suicide reporting guidelines

The Minister for Mental Health says the guidelines for reporting on suicide need to be strengthened.

Kathleen Lynch made the comments at the launch of Samaritans Ireland's Impact Report for 2012 which reveals a 3% increase in the number of calls to the helpline in the past year - one in six of them related to the recession, up from one in 10 in 2011.

Minister Lynch says she is hugely concerned about the coverage of suicide in the media after two Donegal sisters Erin and Shannon Gallagher died by suicide within weeks of each other.

“The type of detail that is often gone into is unnecessary. We are talking about someone’s life ending and we need to be a lot more respectful.

“There is a code of conduct around the reporting issue and maybe we need to take a second look at it and start strengthening.”

Executive director of The Samaritans, Suzanne Costello, said that contagion or copycat suicides pose a particular threat to young people, because of a lack of understanding.

"For someone who is lonely and isolated this can sometimes seem as sort of a rapid way to get recognition that they may feel that they want," she said.

"But of course it's a trail of devastation, and I think again, inadvertently these things happen.

"We need to be extremely careful about giving accurate information, dealing with the facts of the issue, and not romanticising in any way and making this something that some people may in some cases aspire to or identify with."