It is difficult to claim that India is a happy country: it reportedly accounts for around 17 per cent of the world’s deaths by suicide with 17.5 per cent of the world’s population. Figures for each year vary among different agencies, suggesting that suicide is often disguised as other kinds of death. India does not seem to have emerged fully from the hangover of the religious and social stigma that traditionally enveloped self-destruction, manifested in furtive cover-ups and whispered family secrets. The psychology around suicide became larger than the psychology of the person who found life too painful, distorting people’s approach to the tragedy. That is sad and ironic in a country where suicide is painfully familiar. That this problematic attitude affects the media too was revealed when most of the English-language dailies included in a study that assessed the responsible reporting of suicide did not do well.

The study used a scorecard with 10 positive and 10 negative parameters applied to 1,318 suicide reports in these newspapers from April 1 to June 20, 2020. That the positive parameters included references to support services and helplines, comments from suicide prevention experts and mental health specialists and hopeful stories underlined the importance of making a positive impact on vulnerable people. Responsible media must be helpful, not negatively suggestive. The positive parameters also included links to mental health and drug or alcohol abuse. Without playing down the relevance of mental health in self-destructive tendencies, it must not be forgotten that the attitude to mental health problems and substance abuse in Indian society is still beset with guilt, shame and secrecy. The reporting must tread a fine line when referring to these, aiming at acceptance, dignity, compassion and the desire to help while eliminating derision or dismissiveness.

The death of the actor, Sushant Singh Rajput, fell within the period of the study, and most newspapers inclined towards the negative parameters: criminalizing terminology — ‘committed suicide’, for example, like a crime or immoral act — or front-page positioning, sensational headlines, description of method of death, photographs without the required caution and so on. Newspapers were not alone in such violations; the reporting of Rajput’s death was seized upon by electronic media with equally unpleasant energy. The World Health Organization’s guidelines for reporting suicide, from which the Press Council of India derives its own principles, suggest especial care in the case of celebrity deaths, with no sensationalizing and speculation. These not only strip a human being of dignity but they can also encourage vulnerable persons to copy the act. The pointers offered by the study are salutary, especially with the possibility that the suicide count will go up with the pandemic. The link with mental health and the possibility of healing are important messages, while in India mental health must also been seen in the light of socio-economic factors such as joblessness, debt, caste discrimination or rape in the attempt at prevention.