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For Professor听Ann Luce, her extensive work in the sensitive communication around suicide began when her partner Richard died by suicide in 2006.

Professor Ann Luce

Throughout her career, she听has been driven by her desire to prevent suicide and use her expertise as a communicator to play an active role in protecting life.

Prof.听Luce, a Professor of听Journalism and Health Communication at BU, has had a long and successful career in both journalism and academia.

Using the insight of her research, fuelled by personal experience and her professional practice working with those in public health and the NHS, she听is uniquely placed to offer insight to help other communicators in the way they talk about suicide.

鈥淩esearch can be very theoretical, but I鈥檓 a practitioner - it isn鈥檛 just about the talk, it鈥檚 about the action,鈥� said Prof.听Luce, who is also UK national representative to the .

The role of the media

According to the UK鈥檚 Office for National Statistics, there are 10.1 suicides per 100,000 people in the UK.听 The reporting of suicide in the media can play a vital role in the way that these deaths are reported.

鈥淩eporting on suicide is a particularly sensitive task for journalists, requiring them to display considerable tact and empathy while ensuring they fulfil their professional duty with comprehensive, accurate coverage within deadlines,鈥� explained Prof.听Luce.

鈥淚t never sat well with me that journalists were blamed for suicide, the 鈥榤edia is to blame鈥� trope just doesn鈥檛 work for me. As an academic, it鈥檚 my responsibility to use my research to fix the problem, so that鈥檚 what I鈥檝e done. I work with journalists now, and communication specialists to educate them on how to responsibly report and talk about suicide.鈥�

The Suicide Reporting Toolkit

In 2020, the was released as a resource for journalists and journalism educators. Prof.听Luce worked alongside her colleague Dr Sallyanne Duncan at the University of Strathclyde on the toolkit, which provides a simple and clear framework to help those communicating deaths by suicide in a sensible and responsible way.

The Suicide Reporting Toolkit embeds five sets of global media reporting guidelines, making the toolkit truly accessible for journalists around the world. It advises journalists on ways to cover stories of people taking their own lives while avoiding sensationalism,听stigmatisation听and听putting other lives at risk.

The toolkit also provides information around听judicious use of statistics and social media posts,听as听well as omitting excessive details on the method or location of a suicide and offering details on sources of support.听

The aim was to create a tool that was embedded in storytelling and the news process to make it easier for journalists to report responsibly as they produce content.听It also included guidelines for ethical teaching to students, and self-care for journalists who cover these emotive stories.

Since its launch, the toolkit has been widely used across the globe. It has been used by police in Malaysia to train officers in speaking to journalists about suicide, work that was subsequently praised by the Malaysian Assembly for its success.

The World Health Organisation has supported the dissemination of the principles created in the toolkit, as well as the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma and the Ethical Journalism Network here in the UK. The toolkit was highly commended by the Times Higher Education at their 2021 Awards.听

Supporting suicide prevention strategies

Closer to home, Prof.听Luce has worked with Dorset Healthcare to help them understand issues of staff suicide amongst their workforce. She has also played an active role in helping to de-escalate suicide clusters across the UK, reported to have saved 20 lives in Bournemouth in 2019.

Subsequently, Prof.听Luce鈥檚 work helped to kick off a Pan-Dorset working group, with the remit to think more strategically about how to prevent loss of life by suicide in Dorset, through better access to care, and better communication of suicide in the region.

Martin R White, Health and Wellbeing Programme Manager, Public Health England said: 鈥淒r Luce鈥檚 contributions and research findings have contributed to saving lives by supporting change in the system-wide practices and thinking around suicide sites and suicide prevention in Dorset.鈥�

Prof. Luce said: 鈥淚 had been active in the Bridgend suicides in Wales in 2008, so I knew how clusters worked and I was able to see it, to see that locally, there was no sense of urgency, that people were dying, and it was preventable.

鈥淭hat was the big thing - educating people about the urgency of it, and that something can be done to help stop people dying. To be able to work with organisations across Dorset to create a strategy that was then implemented, to put it into action, to have it operationalised, and to have the result where 20 lives were saved 鈥� it was the application of everything I鈥檝e done.

鈥淚t saved lives and that blows my mind. If I do nothing else in my life, that was extraordinary.鈥�

The Suicide Reporting Toolkit can be freely accessed at:听听

For more information or advice about suicide prevention visit:听