Suicide reports in the news – impact of Chief Coroner's call to open up suicide reporting

ABSTRACT

Aim: In 2010, the then Chief Coroner called for an opening up of suicide reporting in the press. We aimed to discover if this controversial action influenced the nature and extent of reporting of individual suicide cases in the newsprint media.

Method: A Factiva search of news reports from high circulation newspapers was conducted over four years. We counted the number of news reports of individual suicides and examined any mention of demographics, methods, location and contributing factors.

Results: We retrieved 291 individual suicide reports, 161 before and 130 after the Chief Coroners’ call. Reporting was more detailed after the call, with increased reporting of demographics, contributing factors and methods but less reporting of location. Most of these differences did not reach statistical significance.

Conclusion: The press did not appear to take the action of the Chief Coroner as a licence to report more frequently on individual suicide cases.     

Establishing auditory-tactile-visual equivalence classes in children with autism and developmental delays

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - The current study sought to evaluate the efficacy of a stimulus equivalence training procedure in establishing auditory–tactile–visual stimulus classes...     

Racial Quotas and the Culture War in Brazilian Academia

Dozens of Brazilian universities recently adopted racial quotas for negros, read Afro-Brazilians, in higher education. Anyone familiar with the Brazilian context will recognize this step as a paradigm shift in the state’s approach to ‘race’. State discourse in past decades touted a mixed-race population not beset by overt discriminatory practices. In response to this new approach, two well-defined clusters of professors in Brazil’s universities authored several dueling manifestos supporting and opposing race-based affirmative action. This article suggests a ‘culture war’ framing of the debate and delineates the contrasting historic ideologies of racialism and antiracialism that inform the divergent racial worldviews of each academic camp. It then explores four points of contention from the manifestos that characterize their conflicting perspectives. They differ in terms of (1) their images of the Brazilian nation, (2) their diagnoses of the mechanisms behind non-white underrepresentation in Brazilian universities, (3) their prognoses for a remedy via racial quotas, and (4) their motivations for entering the debate. At the same time, the article locates some possible common ground.     

Parents' perspectives on young suicide

Strategies for the prevention of adolescent suicide are frequently designed to identify those young people who represent a high risk in order that services and support can be effectively targeted. This study explored the experiences of parents who had lost a child through suicide. The findings suggest that the range of behaviours perceived by parents was too broad and diverse to allow for a checklist approach to the identification of risk. The parents' responses did produce some valuable reflections on their experiences of professional support as well as some key messages on parenting which could be disseminated to all parents of adolescents.     

Psychology as a Profession: An Effective Career Exploration and Orientation Course for Undergraduate Psychology Majors

The authors describe an undergraduate psychology course that covers academic advising and career planning. Lectures included choosing a major, job opportunities with a bachelor's degree, applying to graduate school, and guest lectures from professionals in psychology‐related careers. Students completed a plan of study, a résumé, and a career exploration paper. Students evaluated the course and assignments as being moderately high in value and recommended that the course continue to be required for psychology majors. Nearly all students (93%) either changed their career plans or felt more confident about their plans after taking the course. Recommendations for implementing a similar course are provided.