News and Social Policy: Reporting of Suicide and Mental Illness

his paper elaborates how contemporary communication and media theory can contribute toward the continuing development of national mental health and suicide prevention strategies and related public policy. The initial focus is on critical reviews of the existing international research literature and the underlying framework and methods used in an extensive monitoring study of Australian media reporting practices, which was funded by the then Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care. We then describe how our research program has moved to investigations of the nature of medical and health professional, journalistic and lay discourses, including of those diagnosed with mental illness, about suicide and mental health. This research, necessarily independent of government, draws on risk and cultural theory.