 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Be careful how you write about suicide, particularly in articles about serious medical conditions or people who have killed themselves. |
Not everyone who reads our encyclopaedia is in a normal state of mind. Editors are asked to consider the risk of what the authors of this essay are calling suicide-normalizing language.
Suicidal behaviour is neither a normal response to the levels of stress experienced by most people, nor a standard consequence of major mental disorders.[1]
Wikipedia is in the real world, and Wikipedia articles can cause real harm. Suicide is communicable. According to the WHO, word choice in articles about people who kill themselves can protect against this suicide contagion.[2]
"Suicide-normalizing language" is when a Wikipedia article implies that suicide is a normal response to an event or diagnosis. Scientists know that suicide is not a normal response to an abnormal situation; it is instead an abnormal reaction to a normal situation.[3]
For example, consider the phrase:
Condition X is painful and difficult to treat, and sufferers are much more likely than the general population to kill themselves.
These words may be true and well-sourced. There are diseases such as Trigeminal neuralgia, historically called suicide disease. Nevertheless, the order of ideas implies that suicide is an appropriate or normal response to the diagnosis. Wikipedia could be a factor in a person's decision to attempt suicide.
In articles about medical conditions edit
Language used by the press or in historical medical documents can be careless. When describing suicide risk:
- Check the statistics do match the perception.
- Weigh up whether the literature thinks a statistical correlation with suicide (or thoughts) is notable for a summary of the condition or just a factoid found by an internet search.
- Avoid juxtaposing suffering with suicide in one sentence or section. Symptoms, management and prognosis should be separate sections.
Self-euthanasia or assisted dying edit
Some people with painful and incurable medical conditions do make a rational and informed choice to die. It would be impossible to write articles about Debbie Purdy or Tony Nicklinson without using some kind of suicide-normalizing language.
In biographies edit
The main risk here is of imitative suicide, which is of most concern in biographies of celebrities. Young women are at the greatest risk. When describing a person's suicide:
- Do not misrepresent suicide as a mysterious act by an otherwise healthy or high achieving person, even where newspaper or television articles do so.
- Do not present suicide as a reasonable way of problem solving.
- Do not present suicide as a response to a single event, a single medical diagnosis, or a single mental health condition. Contrary to news media presentations of suicide events, which tend to be simplistic, in fact suicide is almost always multicausal.
- Do not portray suicide in a heroic or romantic fashion.
- Avoid describing method and site in any detail.
- Be careful about the order of ideas, which can inadvertently imply that a person killed themselves for a single reason.
Notes edit
- ^ Rihmer, Zoltán; Rutz, Wolfgang (2021). "Early detection and management of suicidal patients in primary care". In Wasserman, Danuta (ed.). Oxford Textbook of Suicidology and Suicide Prevention (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 437. doi:10.1093/med/9780198834441.003.0052. ISBN 9780198834441.
- ^ https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/258814/WHO-MSD-MER-17.5-eng.pdf
- ^ van Heeringen, Kees (2018). "Introduction". The Neuroscience of Suicidal Behavior. Cambridge Fundamentals of Neuroscience in Psychology. Cambridge University Press. pp. xii–xiii. ISBN 9781107148949.