The Psychology of Self-Injury: Exploring Self-Harm & Mental Health

Media & Self-Harm: What Helps, What Harms?, with Dr. Nicholas Westers

Episode Summary

Nicholas J. Westers, Psy.D., ABPP from Children's Health and UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas shares how media affects those who self-injure and self-harm and offers the first ever media guidelines for responsibly reporting and depicting nonsuicidal self-injury.

Episode Notes

In this episode, host and producer of The Psychology of Self-Injury podcast, Dr. Nicholas Westers, shares his own thoughts about how media portray nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) as well as suicide and mass shootings. He walks us through media guidelines for responsibly reporting and depicting each in the news, including the first ever NSSI media guidelines he published with ISSS colleagues. This marks the second solo episode of the podcast.

Media Guidelines:

• Suicide: Read the suicide reporting guidelines published by the World Health Organization (WHO) here, learn about ethical reporting guidelines for media put forth by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) here, and visit reportingonsuicide.org to review those offered by Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (SAVE).
• Mass Shootings: Read about media guidelines for responsible reporting on mass shootings put forth by the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) at www.rtdna.org/mass-shootings or visit reportingonmassshootings.org (this link is not currently active but could be reactivated in the future).
• Nonsuicidal Self-Injury (NSSI): Read about our International Society for the Study of Self-Injury (ISSS) media guidelines for NSSI and self-harm below. Watch Dr. Westers' interview with the British Journal of Psychiatry, the journal that published these guidelines here. See excellent resources provided by the Self-Injury & Recovery Resources (SIRR) at Cornell University at selfinjury.bctr.cornell.edu, including resources for the media here. Below are additional resources referenced in this episode.

1. Westers, N. J., Lewis, S. P., Whitlock, J., Schatten, H. T., Ammerman, B., Andover, M. S., & Lloyd-Richardson, E. E.(2021). Media guidelines for the responsible reporting and depicting of non-suicidal self-injury. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 219(2), 415-418.
2. Westers, N. J. (2024). Media representations of nonsuicidal self-injury. In E. E. Lloyd-Richardson, I. Baetens, & J. Whitlock (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of nonsuicidal self-injury (pp. 771-786). Oxford University Press.
3. Phillips, D. P. (1974). The influence of suggestion on suicide: Substantive and theoretical implications of the Werther effect. American Sociological Review, 39(3), 340–354.
4. Niederkrotenthaler, T., Voracek, M., Herberth, A., Till, B., Strauss, M., Etzersdorfer, E., Eisenwort, B., & Sonneck, G. (2010). Role of media reports in completed and prevented suicide: Werther v. Papageno effects. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 197(3), 234– 243.

Follow Dr. Westers on Instagram and Twitter/X (@DocWesters). To join ISSS, visit itriples.org and follow ISSS on Facebook and Twitter/X (@ITripleS).

The Psychology of Self-Injury podcast has been rated as one of the "10 Best Self Harm Podcasts" and "20 Best Clinical Psychology Podcasts" by Feedspot  and one of the Top 100 Psychology Podcasts by Goodpods. It has also been featured in Audible's "Best Mental Health Podcasts to Defy Stigma and Begin to Heal."