Media gets the focus wrong on suicide
It focused on how the reporting of particular suicides has the potential to prompt people to think of suicide as an attractive way out of difficulties, and then to choose it.
I suggest that another kind of reporting is more powerful in that regard when it propagates the notion that many are choosing that ‘way out’.
It is like how the notion that ‘everyone is at it’ prompts young teenagers to ‘give in’ to intercourse when, in fact, surveys show that at least 70% of our university entrants are still virgins.
Similarly misleading is the reporting of statistics, supplied by suicide professionals, that claim the Irish suicide rate is so high as to have the condition approaching, if not at, epidemic proportions.
The professionals’ central figure is an annual suicide rate of 12.5 per 100,000 of the population. Expressed in percentage terms, however, that works out at 0.0125% of the population.
That means that, annually, around 99% of Irish people do not choose the suicide ‘way out.’
The corresponding figure for the much highlighted ‘young males’ segment would be around 98%.
The link between suicide and depression would also look different in a significant way if, instead of speculating about how many who chose that ‘way out’ were depressed, we talked about how many who experience depression choose it.
I suspect - and we can only guess as many depressives don’t talk to professionals - that around 99% of depressives do not so choose, but instead battle on bravely.
A further illustration of the real situation is that a community of 8,000 may have one suicide each year.
One suicide is, of course, one too many. But I suggest that we don’t help the situation by putting the media focus on the 12.5 per 100,000 figure, thereby suggesting that suicide is a popular choice.
Instead, as the above percentage and absolute figures show, it is far from a popular choice. The reality is that around 99% of us overall, and of depressives in particular, say no to the suicide prompt. I suggest that media reporting doesn’t do those so prompted a favour when it does not keep the focus on that ‘no’ reality.
Joe Foyle
Sandford Road
Ranelagh
Dublin 6
