• What's the Story? Reporting mental health and suicide
• At a glance
• The handbook
  • Foreword
  • Introduction
  • Key facts about mental health
  • Care in and out of the community
  • Reporting mental health and violence
  • Violence: the other side of the story
  • Reporting suicide
  • Language and terminology
  • Industry codes of practice
  • Diagnoses
  • Contacts
• Shift Media Network

Foreword

It’s not often, as a journalist, that you can file a story - and save a life - all in a day’s work.

But following the tips in this handbook could help you do just that - or at least make a real difference to the lives of millions of people and their families who live in the shadow of mental illness.

One in six people reading newspapers and watching the TV news have a mental health problem. The scale of this problem is truly enormous. Mental health problems are estimated to cost the UK economy over £77 billion a year through the costs of care, economic losses and premature death (The Economic and Social Costs of Mental Illness 2003, The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health). Some 630,000 people in England alone are in regular contact with specialist mental health services (Department of Health). And tragically, nearly 6,000 people take their own lives every year in the UK (Samaritans Information Resource Pack, 2007) - that’s 16 families bereaved by suicide every day.

So mental illness and suicide are huge social problems, responsible for untold suffering, that affect every family in the land. None of us, least of all journalists, can responsibly ignore them.

Government and society are already rising to the challenge of this previously hidden problem. Politicians are waking up to the fact that the well-being of society is just as important as the economy. Schools are employing techniques rooted in psychological therapies to try to teach children the life skills to help them lead happy and productive lives. People with mental health problems are increasingly talking openly about their illnesses. The bravery of high-profile people, such as Stephen Fry, Gail Porter and Frank Bruno, speaking out about their experiences, reflects this change in public opinion.

The media hasn’t caught up yet. We’ve been here before. Once the Press reported on black Britons not as people but as a threat to ‘the rest of us’. Often the only time a black face appeared in a newspaper was as a picture caption to a story about violent crime. Now, quite properly, it reports on the lives of black people in their own right and racist stereotyping, linking black men with violence, has become off-limits.

But this is not a “finger-wagging” exercise in political correctness. It’s an opportunity for journalists to be in the vanguard of change, making a difference to the lives of millions of people who are unfairly victimised and socially excluded. I urge you to make good use of this guide and the contacts listed within it.

What can you do? Simple – report accurately and fairly, looking at all sides of the story; get quotes from the horse’s mouth – people with real experience of mental health problems; don’t make the mistake of creating the impression that everyone with a mental health problem is a ‘mad axeman’; give numbers of helplines, like Samaritans when writing about suicide; don’t give details that can – and do – result in people killing themselves in copycat suicides. Simple steps like these avoid causing offence, change lives for the better – and can even save lives.

Jon Snow

What's the Story: Reporting mental health and suicide: A resource for journalists and editors