Checklist: On Suicide – Before You Post or Publish
For newsrooms, influencers, or anyone discussing suicide to report safely and responsibly
Published: June 2025
Key Takeaways
- When suicidal behaviours or death are described, this can lead to imitation or contagion.
- Suicide is preventable – make sure that’s clear.
- Provide links that distressed and/or at-risk individuals can access to find help.
- Avoid describing the suicide act in detail.
- Don’t publish suicide notes or the details contained within.
- Consider the impact of what you post/publish on families.
- Reasons for suicide are complex – be careful in making links.
- Do not suggest that it is caused by any single factor.
- Check your headlines, hashtags, breakers, and images to ensure they don’t stigmatize people who are experiencing suicidal crises or have been touched by suicide.
- Use non-stigmatizing language.
- Shift narratives by offering hope and showing people overcoming suicidal crises.
Suicide is a tragic reality with far-reaching impacts. Having open conversations about suicide can help reduce stigma. If done well, people who post or publish about the topic can help to improve mental health literacy and change the narrative. However, reporting can also contribute harm if done inappropriately, even if the content is created with good intentions. To assist people writing, commenting, or posting about suicide, the Mental Health Commission of Canada compiled this checklist for newsrooms, influencers, or anyone discussing suicide to report safely and responsibly.
Learn about this: Suicide contagion and imitative suicides.
Why? It can impact how you report on suicide. Research shows that up to double-digit percentage increases in suicides can occur after a celebrity’s death. Media reports about suicide death in general are also often followed by increased suicides. This is because of modelling and social learning whereby some people imitate the behaviour of others to whom they relate. This is a public health concern supported by robust evidence, particularly when the death reported is that of a high-profile individual with whom others may identify and admire.
Learn more: Mindset: Reporting on Mental Health, Chapter 6
Do this: Include links to resources for help in your stories and posts.
Why? Most suicides arise from treatable mental illnesses with a minority arising in the context of emotional crises in the absence of mental illness – for which excellent interventions also exist. Suicide is therefore preventable and those at risk should be directed to crisis resources.
Learn more: 988: Suicide Crisis Helpline.
Don’t Do This: Do not describe the details of the method of death.
Why? The modelling of suicide can occur through inadvertent “how to” content in media reports. For this reason, descriptions of suicide methods are strongly discouraged and detailed descriptions should never be presented.
Learn more: Mindset: Reporting on Mental Health, Chapter 6.
Don’t: Publish suicide notes
Why? Suicide notes frequently include content that violates the recommendations set forth in this document including glorifying the act, presenting simplistic ideas about suicide and/or suicide myths, and presenting suicide as a rational or normative solution to problems. Details of suicide notes can also promote identification with the deceased that can increase the risk of imitation.
Learn more: World Health Organization: Preventing suicide: a resource for media professionals.
Consider This: Sharing the story with families before publication.
Why? Although this practice may be unusual for news organizations, in some cases it may be beneficial because of the high degree of sensitivity of stories and to allow media professionals to assess potential impacts on grieving families before a story is published.
Learn more: Sharing Your Story Safely.
Consider: Does your story arc romanticize suicide?
Why? Glorifying suicide can contribute to a contagion effect or make it seem like a rational and/or culturally encouraged solution to problems; at worst, it can come across as heroic. Glamourizing suicide is dangerous and can influence at-risk people to be more likely to attempt suicide.
Learn more: World Health Organization (WHO) Preventing Suicide. The series includes guides for portrayals on cinema and stage.
Learn more: Guidelines for sharing experiences with suicide.
Don’t say “commit” or “committed” suicide. Say, “died by suicide.”
Why? The words “commit” or “committed” evoke the historical (and incorrect) notions that suicide is immoral and/or criminal – rather than a public health problem. This can lead to feelings of shame and stigma in those who experience suicide crises and their loved ones. Worse, this language can discourage folks in distress from seeking help. Suicide was decriminalized in Canada in 1972, and our language should reflect that.
Did you know? One of the first people to draw attention to the role language plays in our perceptions of suicide was Toronto writer Doris Sommer-Rotenberg, who, in a 1998 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, specifically called out the use of the phrase “commit suicide.” Driven by a wish to “keep alive the vitality” of her son, a physician in his thirties who died by suicide, as well as a desire to help prevent similar tragedies, she helped kickstart a movement to overhaul the language of suicide.
Learn more: Language Matters: A Series.
Explore: Shifts in narratives around suicide prevention, focusing on life promotion and stories of survival.
Why? Social learning – meaning learning by observing the behaviour of others – applies to both death and survival. Research shows that media stories showing people overcoming suicidal crises are often followed by fewer suicides. Concepts of hope, resilience, meaning, and connectedness in general can also provide protective and preventative factors for people at risk of suicide. Sharing these stories and concepts is important both on their own and for context in the case where a suicide death is deemed newsworthy and in need of coverage.
Example: The Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention’s resource, Promoting Hope and Resiliency, offers three key ideas to include in stories: hope, help, and healing.
Learn more: The First Nations Mental Wellness Continuum Framework — developed by the Thunderbird Partnership Foundation with Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners, including Health Canada — identifies hope, meaning, belonging, and purpose as underpinning many Indigenous ways of knowing.
Additional Resources
- Mindset: Reporting on Mental Health is a field guide by and for news organizations and is published by The Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma, in association with CBC News, and made possible, in part, by funding from the Mental Health Commission of Canada, provided to MHCC by a grant from Health Canada.
- Suicide Prevention and Life Promotion in Schools: A National Guide for System Leaders provides advice on suicide, reporting, and supporting young people.
- Suicide Prevention Resources: This page links to courses, toolkits, factsheets, and articles from the Mental Health Commission of Canada.
- Talking to Children About a Suicide is a conversation tool to help caregivers, parents, and guardians understand how to speak with children when a suicide happens in the community or if someone they know has died by suicide. Research has shown that talking about suicide does not increase a child’s risk of suicide; in fact, it can be a helpful experience.
Do you cover sensitive topics? The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, CBC/Radio-Canada, and the Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma publishes the Trauma Aware Journalism website for newsroom professionals. They discuss the mental health effects of covering difficult subjects and offer resources
Courses
- Mental Health First Aid courses teach you how to provide help to someone developing a mental health problem, experiencing a mental health crisis, or worsening mental health.
- Suicide: Facing the Difficult Topic Together is an online module designed to assist medical professionals in preparing for such conversations. Health-care providers play a pivotal role in preventing suicides in Canada. They’re often in the best position to identify those at risk of suicide and to provide or link them with the care they need.
Information and Data
- The World Health Organization includes suicide prevention topics from around the globe. Each year, more than 703,000 people die by suicide after many attempts, corresponding to one death every 40 seconds.
- Statistics Canada compiles data on suicide and its impacts. In Canada, 4,500 die by suicide annually, which is approximately 12 people per day. Every day, more than 200 people attempt suicide.
- World Suicide Prevention Day is a global movement that takes place annually on September 10. September also marks Suicide Awareness Month.
Compiled By
Fateema Sayani, who has led newsrooms and editorial projects for more than two decades, and has worked as a reporter, editor, feature writer, and fact-checker. She edits The Catalyst, the magazine of the Mental Health Commission of Canada which foregrounds the voices of people with lived experience of mental health challenges. She earned the magazine four Canadian Online Publishing Awards and is a survivor of suicide loss.
Christine Sismondo, PhD, is a historian who writes about social issues. Her work is featured regularly in the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. She is a National Magazine Award winner, Canadian Online Publishing Award winner, and the author of several books.
Reviewed By
Mark Sinyor, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, Staff Psychiatrist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and Vice President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP). Dr. Sinyor leads the IASP’s ‘Partnerships for Life’ initiative aimed at promoting national suicide prevention strategies across the Americas. His main research focus is suicide prevention both at the public health and clinical levels and he has a particular interest in mental health literacy and imparting life skills and coping to youth.
Jessica Ward-King, BSc, PhD, aka the StigmaCrusher, is a mental health advocate and keynote speaker with a rare blend of academic expertise and lived experience. Equipped with a doctorate in experimental psychology and firsthand knowledge of bipolar disorder, she’s both heavily educated and, as she likes to say, heavily medicated. Crazy smart, she’s been crushing mental health stigma since 2010 through online content and articles in The Catalyst, the magazine of the Mental Health Commission of Canada.