This in depth analysis looks at how suicide was represented in the British press when 20 young people between the ages of 15 and 29 took their own lives in the South Wales Borough of Bridgend in 2008. The chapters highlight specific categories of description that journalists use to explain suicide to their readers. The study also examines the discourses that emerged around suicide that continue to perpetuate stigma and shame when suicide occurs today. Using her own experience of having lost a loved one to suicide, coupled with original research, the author gives a very frank explanation of why suicide is not accepted in society today.

This text makes a primary and informed contribution to a subject that is under-researched in the UK — the suicide of those who work in the UK police service — by offering an analysis of UK case studies of officers and staff who have either completed suicide or experienced suicide ideation, and referring to the likely prime suicide precipitators in these situations. This analysis is followed by an examination of literature that discusses general and police-specific suicide. The text then examines intervention measures and support mechanisms that are currently offered to those working in the police service, as well as other measures that might be introduced in the future. Designed for criminal justice professionals and affected laypeople, including the families of those in the police service, Police Suicide is a crucial text for any who have an interest in the holistic and psychological welfare of police officers and staff.

Preventing Harmful Behaviour in Online Communities explores the ethics and logistics of censoring problematic communications online that might encourage a person to engage in harmful behaviour. Using an approach based on theories of digital rhetoric and close primary source analysis, Zoe Alderton draws on group dynamics research in relation to the way in which some online communities foster negative and destructive ideas, encouraging community members to engage in practices including self-harm, disordered eating, and suicide. This book offers insight into the dangerous gap between the clinical community and caregivers versus the pro-anorexia and pro-self-harm communities – allowing caregivers or medical professionals to understand hidden online communities young people in their care may be part of. It delves into the often-unanticipated needs of those who band together to resist the healthcare community, suggesting practical ways to address their concerns and encourage healing. Chapters investigate the alarming ease with which ideas of self-harm can infect people through personal contact, community unease, or even fiction and song and the potential of the internet to transmit self-harmful ideas across countries and even periods of time. The book also outlines the real nature of harm-based communities online, examining both their appeal and dangers, while also examining self-censorship and intervention methods for dealing with harmful content online. Rather than pointing to punishment or censorship as best practice, the book offers constructive guidelines that outline a more holistic approach based on the validity of expressing negative mood and the creation of safe peer support networks, making it ideal reading for professionals protecting vulnerable people, as well as students and academics in psychology, mental health, and social care.

Ethical Reporting of Sensitive Topics explores the underlying complexities that journalists may face when covering difficult news stories. Reporting on issues such as suicide, sexual abuse, or migration is a skill that is often glossed over in a journalist’s education. By combining theory and practice, this collection will correct this oversight and give journalists the expertise and understanding to report on these subjects responsibly and ethically. Contributors to this volume are an international group of journalists-turned- academics, who share their first-hand experiences and unique professional insight into best ethical journalistic practice for reporting on sensitive topics. Drawing from a range of case studies, contributors discuss the most appropriate approach to, for example, describing a shooter who has killed a group of schoolchildren or interviewing someone who has lost everything in a natural disaster. Readers are invited to consider factors which have the potential to influence the reporting of these sorts of topics, including bias, sensationalism, conflict of interest, grief, vulnerability, and ignorance of one’s own privilege. Ethical Reporting of Sensitive Topics aims to support all journalists, from students of journalism and individuals encountering a newsroom for the first time, to those veteran journalists or specialist journalists who seek to better their reporting skills.

Our teens are at risk for suicides, and this essential volume will help you help your at-risk teens from the devastation of suicide. This volume expertly recognizes the intimate relationship between its subject and reader as it weaves together different points of view. Does the desire for attention motivate teens to commit suicide? Do antidepressants contribute to an increase in teen suicides? Are gay teens at a greater risk for suicide? Can silencing cyberbullies put an end to suicides? These and other important questions are answered.

A killer needs to be stopped. But no-one believes there's been a murder. A suicide at the Manor Hotel upset leaves the locals shaken. But not Kempston Hardwick. He's suspicious. The more he learns, the more sure he is that whatever happened in room 13 wasn’t suicide. The police won't even consider murder. So it's up to Hardwick and his friend Ellis Flint to find the truth. Will Hardwick discover the true killer, or will he and Ellis become the next guests who go to room 13 to check out permanently?

Suicide Century investigates suicide as a prominent theme in twentieth-century and contemporary literature. Andrew Bennett argues that with the waning of religious and legal prohibitions on suicide in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the increasing influence of medical and sociological accounts of its causes and significance in the twentieth century, literature responds to the act and idea as an increasingly normalised but incessantly baffling phenomenon. Discussing works by a number of major authors from the long twentieth century, the book explores the way that suicide makes and unmakes subjects, assumes and disrupts meaning, induces and resists empathy, and insists on and makes inconceivable our understanding of ourselves and of others.