Reporting Femicide-Suicide in the News: The Current Utilization of Suicide Reporting Guidelines and Recommendations for the Future

Abstract

Public health officials have developed and disseminated recommendations for the responsible reporting of suicide in an effort to dispel myths about suicide-completers and minimize contagion effects. However, recommendations as to the reporting of homicide-suicide events have not been a priority in these initiatives. The current study assesses the degree to which newspaper coverage of the most commonly occurring type of homicide-suicide event, femicide-suicide, adhere to existing suicide reporting recommendations by examining newspaper coverage (n = 143) of a population of femicide-suicide cases (n = 83) from North Carolina for the years 2002–2009. The current study demonstrates the importance of developing and disseminating reporting guidelines to assist in dispelling myths about the victims and perpetrators of lethal intimate partner violence.