Samaritans' 2026 media guidelines advise against calling suicides an 'epidemic' or a 'wave'
- Samaritans published its Media Guidelines for Reporting Suicide in June 2026, a 16-page document for journalists and programme makers, with separate versions for Ireland and Wales. The text calls itself advisory and 'in no way intended to limit press freedom'; its stated purpose is to reinforce industry codes of practice and editorial policies.
- The 'Don't use' column of the language table lists 'commit suicide', 'suicide victim', suicide 'epidemic', 'wave', 'iconic site' and 'hot spot', 'cry for help', a 'successful', 'unsuccessful' or 'failed' suicide attempt, and labels such as suicide 'tourist'. The 'Do use' column offers 'a suicide', 'taken' or 'ended' their own life, 'die by' or 'death by suicide', 'suicide attempt', 'attempted suicide' and 'person at risk of suicide'.
- Reporters are asked not to call a possible rise in suicides in a place or group an 'epidemic', 'spate' or similar term, because two or more deaths among people of similar background, age or area may be coincidence and evidence suggests that reference to clusters can lead to additional suicides. Labelling a location a 'suicide hot spot' or 'notorious site' can turn it into an iconic site that draws vulnerable people.
- More than 6,000 people across the UK and the Republic of Ireland take their own lives each year, the document states. It describes a 2020 research summary that associated reporting of celebrity suicides with a 13% increase in suicides in the following 1–2 months, and it advises timeframes of three or more years for judging trends.
Two or more people who take their own lives and share a background, an age or a neighbourhood 'may be coincidence', the Samaritans guidelines tell journalists, and a word such as 'epidemic' or 'spate' implies a connection where there may be none. The advice comes from a 16-page document that Samaritans, the charity behind the free 116 123 helpline, published in June 2026 for journalists and programme makers. It is advisory and leans on the industry's own codes of practice.
A place that becomes known
Scale words fill one row of the language table: suicide 'epidemic', 'wave', 'iconic site', 'hot spot'. For place words the guidelines give a mechanism. Calling a location a 'suicide hot spot' or a 'notorious site' raises awareness of the method and the place, and can turn it into an iconic site, widely known for suicides, that draws vulnerable people to it. For words about numbers the reasoning takes one line: evidence suggests that reference to clusters can lead to additional suicides.
The document keeps 'contagion' and 'cluster' for itself as research terms. A cluster, in its own definition, is a greater number of suicides than expected in a location or community, a count set against an expectation. 'Wave' and 'epidemic' keep the sense of spread and drop both.
Single years, small groups
Three years is the shortest window the guidelines recommend for identifying a significant pattern. Rates in a single year may deviate from the overall trend, especially in small geographic areas or particular groups, and when statistics are quoted to children and young people, alarmist reports can normalise suicide or exaggerate how common it is. Young people, the document adds, are at greater risk of contagion if a suicide has affected them. A 2020 research summary it describes linked reporting of celebrity suicides with a 13% increase in suicides over the following 1–2 months.
Parents, head teachers, colleagues
The guidelines are written for newsrooms, and the words they list travel well beyond them. A parent talks about a wave at the school, a head teacher asks whether pupils are going through an epidemic, a colleague calls a local area a hot spot. The mechanism the document describes does not depend on who speaks: a death can become a model for others through grief or over-identification with the person who died.
When a young client or a family uses a word of scale after a peer's death, the clinician can treat it as a cue for questions instead of a word to correct. How many deaths, over what period, and how close were they to this client? Does the client have thoughts of suicide, and how strongly do they identify with the person who died? On that second question the guidelines state there is no evidence that asking someone if they are OK will make them feel worse.
A story of someone who sought help and came through a crisis, which the guidelines call the Papageno effect, can then take the place of the wave.
In the Samaritans guidelines a cluster is a count set against an expectation, and 'wave' keeps the sense of spread while dropping both.
These are advisory guidelines for the media, published for the UK with separate versions for Ireland and Wales, and they are not a clinical guideline. The document summarises its research without a reference list; Samaritans supplies the full list on request. The clinical reading of the word list in this note is the author's, not the document's.