Singh Rakesh, Mahato Sharika, Khadka Seema, Basnet Pragyan, Bista Kalendra, Karki Ritika, Arafat S M Yasir
Research Department Transcultural Psychosocial Organization (TPO) Nepal Kathmandu Nepal.
Visiting Faculty, Department of Community Medicine and Public Health KIST Medical College Lalitpur Nepal.
Health Sci Rep. 2022 Mar 7;5(2):e547. doi: 10.1002/hsr2.547. eCollection 2022 Mar.
Sensible media reporting of suicide is a population-based suicide prevention strategy. However, the quality of media reporting of suicide has not been assessed in Nepal.
We aimed to assess the newspaper reporting status of suicide in Nepal with reference to World Health Organization (WHO) media guidelines for suicide reporting.
We retrospectively searched eight major newspapers in Nepal between January 2020 and May 2021 and assessed 167 news reports against WHO suicide reporting guidelines.
Potentially harmful characteristics were found to be reported in both the title and main text of the reports. About half of them mentioned sex (48.5%) and 38.3% mentioned the location of suicide in the title. Of the 167 reports, 74.3%, 95.2%, 34.7%, 92.2%, 98.8%, and 52.7% mentioned the name, sex, occupation, method of suicide, the location of suicide, and life events, respectively, in their main content. On the other hand, only 6% and 2.4% of reports mentioned linkage of suicides with mental illness and substance abuse, respectively. While lesser than 1% of reports narrated educative information regarding suicide prevention, none mentioned contact information for help-seeking for the vulnerable.
Newspaper reporting of suicide in Nepal poorly adheres to WHO guidelines, substantiated by the high presence of potentially harmful characteristics and negligible presence of potentially helpful characteristics.
媒体对自杀进行合理报道是一项基于人群的自杀预防策略。然而，尼泊尔尚未对媒体关于自杀的报道质量进行评估。
我们旨在参照世界卫生组织（WHO）的自杀报道媒体指南，评估尼泊尔报纸对自杀的报道情况。
我们回顾性检索了2020年1月至2021年5月尼泊尔的八家主要报纸，并根据WHO自杀报道指南对167篇新闻报道进行了评估。
在报道的标题和正文均发现存在潜在有害特征。其中约一半提及性别（48.5%），38.3%在标题中提及自杀地点。在167篇报道中，74.3%、95.2%、34.7%、92.2%、98.8%和52.7%在主要内容中分别提及了自杀者姓名、性别、职业、自杀方式、自杀地点和生活事件。另一方面，仅6%和2.4%的报道分别提及自杀与精神疾病和药物滥用的关联。虽然不到1%的报道叙述了有关自杀预防的教育信息，但没有一篇提及弱势群体寻求帮助的联系信息。
尼泊尔报纸对自杀的报道严重不符合WHO指南，这体现在潜在有害特征大量存在而潜在有益特征几乎不存在。
