Quality of media reporting of suicidal behaviors in South-East Asia

Background: Suicide is a major global public health problem whilst sensible media reporting in an important population-level prevention strategy. Objectives: We reviewed the quality of media reporting of suicidal behaviors in the World Health Organization (WHO)-South-East Asia Region (SEAR) countries. Methods: We searched and scrutinized the contents of 12 articles published from SEAR countries (5 from India, 4 from Bangladesh, one from Indonesia, one from Sri Lanka and one from Bhutan) against suicide reporting guidelines. Results: Five out of the eleven SEAR countries, media reporting of suicide has been studied. All the studies have been carried out in the last decade with gross heterogeneity in the methods. All the articles report about poor adherence to media guidelines for suicide by most of the newspapers. Most countries in the region either lack country-specific media guidelines or poor implementation and monitoring of guidelines or both. Conclusion: The quality of reports of suicidal behavior in the SEAR region is poor. There is a need to develop country-specific media reporting guidelines and stringent monitoring on it to improve the quality of media reporting on suicide which may be beneficial for the prevention of suicide in the region.