Media reporting of suicide: do we need more than guidelines?

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Anna Sri summarises a recent systemic review and meta-analysis led by Thomas Niederkrotenthaler, which explores the association between media reporting of suicide and actual suicidal behaviour in the community; a phenomenon known as the Werther effect.

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Media reporting of suicide loss: learning from family and friends who have been bereaved by suicide

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Hannah Scott writes her debut blog on a recent qualitative study which looks at the experiences of people bereaved by suicide regarding media reporting of the death.

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Is mental malaise the psychological equivalent of obesity?

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Stan Kutcher reflects on a recently published briefing paper entitled: mental ill-health among children of the new century, which concluded that one in four 14 year old girls had self-reported “high symptoms of depression”.

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Media coverage of mental illness has increased significantly in recent years

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Ed Sykes from the Science Media Centre considers a recent study of changes in newspaper coverage of mental illness from 2008 to 2014 in England.

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Integrated treatment for first episode psychosis: media hype versus reality

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Alex Langford reflects on the media hype surrounding a new RCT of the NAVIGATE intervention; a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, team-based treatment approach for first episode psychosis.

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The PACE Trial for chronic fatigue syndrome: choppy seas but a prosperous voyage

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Simon Wessely responds to the huge amount of recent criticism that has surrounded the publication of a follow-up paper of the PACE trial into chronic fatigue syndrome. This extended blog presents the PACE trial and its main results, but also reminds us what makes a good RCT, as well as exploring how well PACE measures up.

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Suicide prevention at suicide hotspots

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David Steele talks us through a systematic review and meta-analysis, which found that commonly used interventions are effective at preventing completed suicides at suicide hotspots.

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No link between SSRI use and violent crime in over 25s

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Sarah McDonald considers the implications of a recent cohort study of SSRI use and violent crime, which suffered from the usual headline grabbing media coverage, so typical of research about young people, violence, crime, drugs and mental health.

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‘Beat the cheat’: disability welfare benefits and newspaper reporting

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Gerry Bennison offers food for thought in his blog on research into how disability welfare has been characterised in popular UK tabloid articles.

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Depression to blame for violent crime? The curse of the headline writers

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Laurence Palfreyman highlights a population study from researchers at Oxford University, which investigates the links between depression and violent crime. The study finds that people with depression were three times more likely to have been convicted of violent crime than those without depression, but we need to be careful about how we interpret these relative risk figures.

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