Correct Word Choice and Phrasing Important for Competent Health Storytelling

From coverage of Cornell University’s response to six students’ deaths by suicide to reports of entertainer Marie Osmond’s teenage son’s death by suicide, recently reporters are writing and talking a lot about suicide.

While it’s great that news coverage is driving public dialogue about this often taboo topic, the news coverage does not utilize linguistically competent language regarding suicide.  As a result, it could hinder groups trying to support and help those impacted by these deaths.

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In response to this suicide news story trend, Alicia Sparks – on her Celebrity Psychings blog – discussed how media can responsibly report on suicide. For example, instead of saying someone “committed suicide,” mental health consumers and leaders prefer to say someone “died by suicide” instead. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, American Association of Suicidology and Annenberg Public Policy Center provide tips to reporters on how to report on suicide without inadvertently encouraging  copycat actions.  Their research shows that the way suicide deaths are reported can impact whether suicide contagions occur or not. Word and phrase selection can be very influential. Overly dramatic headlines like “Do Cornell’s Gorges Make Kids Commit Suicide?” or “Does 6 deaths in 6 months make Cornell ‘suicide school’?” could hinder Cornell’s suicide prevention efforts.

Suicide is not the only mental health challenge or health-related issue to fall victim to the media’s inflammatory or linguistically incompetent phrasing. It’s not uncommon for reporters to say that someone is “schizophrenic” instead of “has schizophrenia.” Similar to how we speak about cancer, the medical illness, disorder or condition should not be an adjective describing people, but should be phrased as “has cancer,” instead of “is cancerous.”

While the media has been reporting about AIDS/HIV for more than 25 years, they still refer to people living with AIDS/HIV as “is HIV-positive” or “has AIDS,” not acknowledging how medical advances allow people to “live” with the disease as opposed to it being a death sentence.

As health communicators, we must make sure that our media materials use linguistic and culturally competent words and phrases to help the media start stories on the right foot. Competency in our communication can’t be limited to just being “politically correct.”  Instead, we must acknowledge the power (and influence) word selection has in impacting behavior change and engaging (and persuading) key audiences.

Last year, I drafted a media advisory referencing suicide and witnessed the power of words. Familiar with how suicide is discussed within the mental health community, I chose to use “died by suicide” in the media advisory. When the advisory was reviewed by one of the people highlighted in it, I received this email in response:

Bravo! Appreciate the use of “died by suicide” rather than committed suicide as a person who is surviving a sister’s death by suicide in 1995 and as a suicide attempt survivor. It’s language that brings dignity to families, friends and those of us who have struggled to survive and recover.

British politician Pearl Strachan Hurd once said, “Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs.”  We want our words as communicators — and those of the media — to not only inform and persuade, but also offer dignity and respect to sensitive, intimate stories and lives we report in our materials and news outlets.