section_path: Risk factors/Media
section_name: Media
paragraph_text: Media
  
  The media, including the Internet, plays an important role. Certain depictions of suicide may increase its occurrence, with high-volume, prominent, repetitive coverage glorifying or romanticizing suicide having the most impact. For example, about 15–40% of people leave a suicide note, and media are discouraged from reporting the contents of that message. When detailed descriptions of how to kill oneself by a specific means are portrayed, this method of suicide can be imitated in vulnerable people. This phenomenon has been observed in several cases after press coverage. In a bid to reduce the adverse effect of media portrayals concerning suicide report, one of the effective methods is to educate journalists on how to report suicide news in a manner that might reduce that possibility of imitation and encourage those at risk to seek for help. When journalists follow certain reporting guidelines the risk of suicides can be decreased. Getting buy-in from the media industry, however, can be difficult, especially in the long term.
  
  This trigger of suicide contagion or copycat suicide is known as the "Werther effect", named after the protagonist in Goethe 's The Sorrows of Young Werther who killed himself and then was emulated by many admirers of the book. This risk is greater in adolescents who may romanticize death. It appears that while news media has a significant effect, that of the entertainment media is equivocal. It is unclear if searching for information about suicide on the Internet relates to the risk of suicide. The opposite of the Werther effect is the proposed "Papageno effect", in which coverage of effective coping mechanisms may have a protective effect. The term is based upon a character in Mozart 's opera The Magic Flute —fearing the loss of a loved one, he had planned to kill himself until his friends helped him out. As a consequence, fictional portrayals of suicide, showing alternative consequences or negative consequences, might have a preventive effect, for instance fiction might normalize mental health problems and encourage help-seeking.