How the Australian media report and portray suicide and mental health and illness : the case studies

This volume contains five case studies that look at aspects of the Australian media’s coverage of suicide, and mental health and illness. The material on which some of these studies were based was gathered and analysed for the Media Monitoring Project: A Baseline Description of How the Australian Media Report and Portray Suicide and Mental Health and Illness. This major Australian study examined the extent and nature of Australian media reporting and portrayal of suicide, and mental health and illness. (The results, in the form of two separate studies, are reported in The Media Monitoring Project: A Baseline Description of How the Australian Media Report and Portray Suicide and Mental Health and Illness, by J Pirkis, RW Blood, C Francis, P Putnis, P Burgess, B Morley, A Stewart and T Payne, 2001.) The case studies support and extend the work done in the project’s main analyses, drawing out observations and themes first noted in the original work, and also looking at new aspects of media reporting of these topics