Media Coverage of Suicide

For more than two decades, APPC has tracked how news stories erroneously linking the holiday season with suicide, despite national data showing that the suicide rate is largely seasonal & lower in winter.

An analysis of weekly suicide data finds that seasonal fluctuations can explain controversial findings that the adolescent suicide rate increased with release of “13 Reasons Why."

The false claim that the suicide rate rises during the year-end holiday season persisted in some news coverage through the 2021-22 holidays, according to data analyzed by APPC.

While the nation was in the grips of the Covid-19 pandemic during last year’s holiday season, not many in the media were focused on possible links between the holidays and suicide trends.

The holiday season usually has the lowest suicide rates, but news accounts persist in supporting the holiday-suicide myth. While the COVID-19 pandemic has increased risk factors associated with suicide, media should be careful not to make unfounded claims about suicide trends.

Two-thirds of the news stories analyzed last year debunked the holiday-suicide myth, the false claim that suicides increase over the holidays, according to new research from the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

Despite the fact that the holiday season has some of the lowest average daily suicide rates, some journalists continue to inadvertently perpetuate the holiday-suicide myth.

Nearly two-thirds of the newspaper stories linking the holidays and suicide over the 2016-17 holiday season supported a false connection between the two, according to an analysis of media coverage.