Your school’s emergency response team must contact the appropriate media liaison officer. Independent schools can contact Be You headspace or their Chief Executive for media advice. Catholic schools should contact Catholic Education SA Media Liaison. Government schools can contact the Media Liaison Officer directly, or contact SWISS for advice.

You should not and do not have to make comments to the media until you receive advice.

Media reporting

Research shows a potential link between inappropriate reporting of suicides and, later, an increase in copycat suicides.

Any media interest in a student’s death has the potential to disrupt a school’s postvention work. Your school’s emergency response team needs to do careful planning to protect against this.

Media rarely report on suicide, however if journalists contact your school to report on the student’s death, you should contact your media liaison for advice. The media’s reporting can mean that students are more exposed to talk about sudden death or suicide. This can increase the risk of contagion.

You should have one person on your school’s emergency response team liaise with your sector’s media advisor. This helps with consistent actions and accuracy.

Remind students that this information is private and sensitive to the family and the way we can be most supportive at this time is to be kind to one another. Remind students to be mindful of posting anything on social media about the death as this is really private and sensitive to the family.

Mindframe is a national program supporting safe media reporting, portrayal and communication about suicide, mental ill-health and alcohol and other drugs. Resources can be found at: https://mindframe.org.au/.