Suicide: Longing for a consistent approach

This is why I found it objectionable in the extreme that SBS television should choose to show a pro-suicide documentary on the evening of the 23rd of September – less than two weeks after World Suicide Prevention Day. Produced by U.K. fiction writer and assisted suicide advocate, Sir Terry Pratchett, the documentary, Choosing to Die features the assisted suicide death of a U.K. businessman in the Swiss Dignitas death facility. It shows the death of British Hotelier, Peter Smedley who is seen to choke and ask for water as he dies holding the hand of his wife.

I said at the time, ‘In deciding to air this macabre program, SBS is acting as a cheerleader for the pro-suicide brigade’. There’s really no other way to look at it and no posting of suicide prevention hotlines after the program changes that view.

All media outlets have a responsibility to adopt and follow the World Health Organisation guidelines on suicide portrayal. Of the eleven ‘dot points’ in the WHO guidelines, the airing of Choosing to Die by SBS is in breach of at least five by my reckoning. WHO cites over 50 published studies that draw the same conclusion: media reporting of suicides can lead to imitative suicidal behaviors.

In fact, two separate news reports from the U.K. in September pointed clearly to the Pratchett documentary as having influenced the decisions of two men to die by assisted suicide. We can only hope that the same effect does not happen in Australia and that those in need will seek help from our excellent suicide prevention services rather than seeking out the likes of Exit International.

Returning to the Australian statistics, it is true as Philip Nitschke points out, that hanging is the single largest cause of death by suicide and has been so for the last decade at least. Whereas Nitschke’s point is to say that hanging is undignified (pointing to his methods as being somehow more dignified) is it not better by far to observe that this statistic screams to us that more needs to be done to prevent such deaths? What Nitschke fails to tell us is that included in the ‘hanging’ category are also deaths by asphyxiation that might include people who have used Nitschke’s bag death method. So much for a dignified death.

This brings me back to my first observation about discrimination; about the subtle acceptance that perhaps some suicides are okay. And I wonder at what effect the seemingly constant attempts at legalising euthanasia have in this respect – not to mention the macabre media grandstanding on suicide by the likes of Philip Nitschke which seems to pass without criticism in our national media.

We all have some responsibility here because we will all, at some time, know someone who is contemplating suicide. We need to reject the subtle and not-so-subtle messages that might, overtime blur our minds to the reality that regardless of circumstances, no suicides are all right. 

We should constantly remind ourselves to keep on asking: R U Okay? The answer to that question always matters.