Health

“Experts debunk suicide myth” (Washington Times) “Why the holiday suicide myth persists” (USA Today) Download the ACI press release

Despite the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s nine-year effort to debunk the connection, newspapers continue to perpetuate the myth that suicides rise during the end-of-year holiday period. According to an analysis of news reporting during last year’s (2008-09) holiday period, the proportion of stories that supported the myth remained at approximately the same level as during

Michael Hennessy, Ph.D., research analysis manager at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, was lead author of a paper, “Estimating the Longitudinal Association Between Adolescent Sexual Behavior and Exposure to Sexual Media Content,” published in the Journal of Sex Research. Co-authors were APPC’s Dr. Amy Bleakley, Professor Martin Fishbein (principal investigator of the study), and Dr.

In a study just released in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Adolescent Communication Institute (ACI) and five other universities along with a Philadelphia media development firm report that a mass media program directed to African American youth ages 14 to 18 reduced sexual risk behavior, especially among

One of the more persistent myths about the end-of-year holidays is that suicides rise during this period. According to a recently completed analysis of news reporting during last year’s holiday period, there was renewed repetition of this myth in newspaper reporting. Despite the sizeable drop that occurred during the preceding holiday period in 2006, newspapers