Mental Health Risks for Journalists Covering Suicide in Times of Crisis

Abstract

According to the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), over one in every 100 deaths (1.3%) in 2019 was the result of suicide, yet suicide is a highly sensitive issue in the media and often a taboo. The field of communication research has very early recognized the relevance of coverage of suicide. One of the first manuals on journalistic work in 1925 elaborated on newsworthiness of suicide reporting. This paper draws on experiences of journalists who covered suicide cases during multiple crises. There is evidence that an interview is the most appropriate practice to research sensitive topics; thus, expert interviews and episodically ethnographic interviews inform this study. Additional data was collected for analysis during (participatory) observations. The presented article is an outcome of 29 interviews with journalists and mental health professionals in Greece, Spain and Bulgaria. In total, 36 h of interviews and 20 observation protocols were collected during 8 field trips and 5 weeks in total in the field. Most of the data refers to the financial crisis of 2015 and 2016—a period when suicide rates significantly increased. However, selected interviewees were interviewed again after 7–8 years during the post-pandemic time, brutal wars and the substantial cost of living crisis. Journalists who usually give a voice and platform to suicide survivors speak their own perspective and evaluate the impact it had on their mental health and well-being.

1. Introduction

Suicide remains one of the most pressing yet persistently under-reported public health issues worldwide. According to the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), more than one in every hundred deaths in 2019 resulted from suicide, making it a significant global concern that demands careful, informed, and sensitive communication. Despite its prevalence, suicide has long been understood as a socially regulated phenomenon, shaped by cultural norms and collective meanings (Durkheim, 1951), and continues to function as a social taboo in many societies (Satterfield, 2018; Wyllie et al., 2025). Its presence in public discourse is often marked by silence, hesitation, and stigma. In quality media, suicide coverage is subject to heightened ethical scrutiny, editorial caution, and institutional constraints, reflecting long-standing concerns about the potential harm such reporting may cause.

The tension between the public interest in reporting on suicide and the risks associated with its media representation has been widely acknowledged in journalism studies (Beam et al., 2018). As early as 1925, MacCarthy identified suicide as a newsworthy topic, signaling that questions of visibility, responsibility, and restraint have accompanied suicide reporting for more than a century. Yet while ethical frameworks and reporting guidelines have received sustained scholarly attention, the conditions under which journalists themselves engage with this sensitive topic remain far less examined. Subramanian (2014, p. 809), who interviewed journalists awarded for their stories about mental health issues, calls “for more research on how news about mental illness is produced, (…), what resources reporters use in covering stories and how reporters select, frame and develop stories. Further, little information exists on how journalists overcome barriers to quality health reporting, for example, lack of time, lack of space, and commercialism”. This study addresses these gaps by examining the lived experiences of journalists, who reported on suicide across multiple crises in Greece, Spain, and Bulgaria.

Journalists play a crucial role in shaping public understanding of suicide, particularly during periods of acute social disruption. Crises such as economic downturns, pandemics, armed conflicts, and sharp increases in the cost of living intensify social vulnerability and often coincide with greater public visibility of suicide, without implying simple or direct causal relationships (Sinyor et al., 2024). These periods also place heightened pressure on newsrooms to respond quickly and responsibly, frequently under conditions of resource scarcity and organizational instability. In such contexts, journalists are required to navigate emotionally charged interviews, traumatized communities, institutional limits, and moral dilemmas that exceed routine newsroom demands.

2. Theoretical Framework

This study draws on interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of media studies, crisis communication, and the sociology of journalism. It brings together three strands of literature that are central to understanding journalists’ experiences of covering suicide in times of crisis: research on suicide reporting and media ethics, studies of journalism under crisis conditions, and scholarship on emotional labor and mental health in journalism. Together, these perspectives provide a framework for analyzing how systemic, institutional, and personal dynamics interact in shaping journalistic practice and well-being.

Media coverage of suicide has long been recognized as ethically complex and socially consequential. Early reflections in journalism handbooks, such as MacCarthy’s (1925) discussion of the newsworthiness of suicide, illustrate that debates over whether and how to report on suicide have accompanied the profession since its early stages. Contemporary research continues to highlight the tension between the public’s right to information and the potential harm associated with detailed, sensationalized, or repetitive reporting (Pirkis et al., 2024).

A substantial body of scholarship has focused on media effects, particularly the so-called Werther effect (Phillips, 1974), whereby irresponsible coverage may contribute to suicide contagion, and the Papageno effect (Niederkrotenthaler et al., 2010), which emphasizes the protective role of balanced and preventive reporting. In response, international organizations such as the World Health Organization, the International Association for Suicide Prevention, and national media councils have developed guidelines aimed at promoting responsible reporting practices. These guidelines typically emphasize avoiding explicit descriptions of methods, explaining individual cases with mental health issues, and providing information about support services. Recent research has also begun to question how such guidelines avoid broader social context in times of crisis, when newsroom resources are constrained and journalistic routines are disrupted (Korbiel, 2024). This study criticizes guidelines, with one exception of India, for encouraging journalists to explain suicide with individual mental health issues of the person and not accounting for an intentional act of protest. The author claims this practice leads to silencing individuals who died by suicide as an act of radical communication.

While this literature has been instrumental in shaping ethical norms, it has largely prioritized audience effects and normative standards. Far less attention has been paid to how journalists themselves interpret, negotiate, and sometimes struggle with these expectations (Beam et al., 2018), particularly in contexts marked by economic precarity, political instability, or prolonged crisis. This study addresses that gap by shifting the analytical focus from audiences to journalists as producers of suicide-related content and by examining the pressures that shape their everyday decision-making.

3. Journalism in Times of Crisis

Crisis situations, including economic recessions, public health emergencies, wars, and sudden social disruptions, have well-documented effects on media organizations and journalistic practice. Research on crisis communication consistently shows that demand for news intensifies precisely when newsrooms face heightened constraints, such as budget cuts, staff reductions, accelerated production cycles, and increased political or commercial pressure (Cottle, 2011, 2014). These systemic conditions shape not only what can be reported, but also how sensitive topics such as suicide are approached.

In Southern Europe, economic hardship and political instability have historically influenced journalism in distinctive ways (Papathanassopoulos et al., 2023). Studies describe hybrid professional cultures characterized by resource scarcity, blurred boundaries between media and political actors, and competing normative expectations within news organizations (Hall, 2021). During periods of crisis, journalists often operate in environments marked by uncertainty, conflict, and moral tension, navigating institutional demands while attempting to fulfill broader democratic responsibilities.

Theoretical work on media systems and institutional constraints helps explain how these pressures materialize at the organizational level through editorial hierarchies, gatekeeping practices, and the prioritization of particular narratives over others. Within this context, suicide reporting becomes not only an ethical challenge but also an institutional and systemic issue, shaped by the broader economic and political landscape in which journalism is produced.

4. Emotional Labor and Mental Health in Journalism

The emotional dimensions of journalistic work have received increasing scholarly attention, particularly in research on trauma reporting, emotional labor, and occupational stress in media professions (Zelizer, 2007). Journalists covering violence, disaster, and death regularly encounter traumatic material, distressed interviewees, and ethically charged situations. Managing these encounters requires sustained emotional regulation and can lead to outcomes such as burnout, compassion fatigue, and symptoms associated with secondary or vicarious trauma (Pantti et al., 2020). As Pantti and Wahl-Jorgensen (2021, p. 1569) note, journalistic witnessing in crisis contexts often involves “a commitment to elicit an emotional response that incites the audience to action.”

Despite this growing body of work, journalists’ mental health remains unevenly explored, and suicide coverage occupies a particularly marginal position within this literature. Reporting on suicide often involves close interaction with grieving families, vulnerable sources, and highly sensitive information, requiring journalists to balance empathy with professional distance. These demands are intensified during crises, when newsroom cultures tend to prioritize speed, resilience, and productivity, while resources for psychosocial support are limited.

The concept of emotional labor provides a useful analytical lens for understanding these dynamics. Originally developed by Hochschild (1983), emotional labor refers to the management of feelings to meet the emotional requirements of paid work. Applied to journalism, it captures the often-invisible work involved in negotiating empathy, neutrality, and emotional boundaries under conditions of stress and uncertainty. Scholars have shown that emotional labor in journalism is frequently unrecognized, unsupported, and sometimes stigmatized within newsroom cultures, contributing to the silencing of journalists’ own emotional experiences and mental health concerns (Yang & Chen, 2021).

Reporters and photojournalists are routinely exposed to traumatic events as part of everyday work in the news sector. Although such incidents may appear normalized within journalistic routines, repeated and close-up encounters with injured or deceased individuals can generate significant psychological strain (Simpson & Boggs, 1999; McMahon, 2001; Newman et al., 2003; Pyevich et al., 2003; Dworznik, 2011). Empirical research consistently demonstrates that sustained exposure to traumatic material places journalists at risk for a range of stress-related disorders similar to those documented among rescue and emergency personnel (Kelly, 1998; Cote & Simpson, 2000; Norwood et al., 2003; Osofsky et al., 2005).

In extreme cases, journalists may develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Initially identified among combat veterans, PTSD has since been observed across occupations characterized by repeated exposure to trauma, including police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and journalists (Clohessy & Ehlers, 1999; Newman et al., 2003). PTSD is characterized by persistent symptoms of intrusive re-experiencing (e.g., flashbacks, nightmares), avoidance behaviors, and sleep disturbances that endure for more than one month and significantly weaken social and occupational functioning (McFarlane, 1993; Dworznik, 2011). Research identifies several occupational predictors of PTSD among journalists, including the nature of the incident, particularly cases involving deliberate human violence or harm to children, the duration of exposure, such as prolonged on-site reporting or continuous live coverage, and the cumulative frequency of traumatic encounters over time (McCammon, 1996; Heinrichs et al., 2005).

Importantly, the relationship between experience and vulnerability is not linear. While novice journalists often report higher stress levels following initial exposure due to limited coping resources, longitudinal studies suggest that a subset of experienced journalists becomes increasingly vulnerable over time as cumulative exposure exhausts adaptive mechanisms (Norwood et al., 2003). When left unaddressed, PTSD among journalists can lead to severe consequences, including chronic depression, decreased social functioning, leave and reduced productivity (Flannery, 1999). These outcomes highlight the need to conceptualize PTSD not solely as an individual clinical condition but as an occupational health issue embedded within newsroom structures and cultures.

Beyond PTSD, journalists are also sensitive to compassion fatigue, a syndrome arising from prolonged engagement with others’ suffering. Compassion fatigue is commonly conceptualized as comprising two interrelated components: secondary traumatic stress (STS) and burnout (Dworznik, 2011). STS refers to trauma-like symptoms that develop indirectly through repeated empathic exposure to trauma survivors, while burnout reflects the gradual depletion of emotional and physical resources due to chronic occupational stress (Maslach & Schaufeli, 1993; Maslach et al., 2001).

Secondary traumatic stress manifests across affective, cognitive, and relational domains. Affective symptoms include depression, anxiety, sleep disturbances, and somatic complaints; cognitive shifts may involve cynicism, hostile attributions, or victim-blaming. Relational symptoms cover emotional freezing, withdrawal or, conversely, over-identification with sources (Dworznik, 2011). Journalistic work environments can facilitate these responses, particularly through repeated interviews with traumatized individuals, exposure to graphic details, and the necessity to rapidly process others’ suffering under deadline pressure. Such conditions have been shown to damage empathy and professional judgment (Dworznik, 2006, 2011; Dworznik & Grubb, 2007). Risk is further shaped by the cumulative volume of exposure, the graphic intensity of content, and lack of training and organizational support.

Burnout, by contrast, encompasses physiological symptoms (fatigue, sleep disruption, somatic complaints), emotional symptoms (irritability, apathy, guilt), and behavioral manifestations such as withdrawal and depersonalization (Maslach & Schaufeli, 1993). Within newsroom settings, burnout is associated with heavy workloads, intense competition, accelerated production cycles, and professional cultures that stigmatize expressions of emotional distress (Reinardy, 2006). Organizational factors, limited access to counseling resources, and unsupportive managerial practices have been consistently linked to elevated burnout levels across helping professions and are particularly salient in journalism (Maslach & Leiter, 1997).

When secondary traumatic stress and burnout co-occur and significantly impair functioning, they constitute compassion fatigue, a multidimensional syndrome marked by reduced empathy, limited decision-making, and declining job satisfaction and performance (Gentry et al., 2002). For media organizations, the consequences extend beyond individual well-being to include increased turnover, reduced creativity, and diminished organizational effectiveness (Cherniss, 1993).

Existing research identifies several factors that may mitigate or exacerbate trauma-related outcomes among journalists. Social support from peers, supervisors, and formal counseling services has been shown to reduce the severity of secondary traumatic stress and buffer against burnout. Similarly, training in trauma-informed reporting practices and organizational recognition of emotional labor serve as protective mechanisms. Conversely, lack of training, precarious employment conditions, and newsroom cultures that normalize emotional suppression increase vulnerability (Šimunjak, 2023).

Experience level further moderates these dynamics. While early-career journalists may initially exhibit heightened reactivity due to limited coping repertoires, experienced journalists can accumulate psychological burden over time when institutional safeguards are absent (Flannery, 1999). These findings underscore the importance of situating journalists’ mental health not only at the individual level but within broader systemic and organizational contexts.

5. From Trauma Exposure to Emotional Labor in Suicide Reporting

Reporting on suicide frequently involves sustained engagement with grief, moral ambiguity, and social stigma. Unlike episodic coverage of accidents or violence, suicide reporting often requires repeated contact with bereaved families, survivors, and mental health professionals, as well as careful negotiation of ethical boundaries concerning privacy, responsibility, and potential harm. These characteristics intensify both secondary traumatic stress and burnout, particularly during prolonged crisis periods when newsroom resources are constrained.

Compassion fatigue offers an important framework for understanding the cumulative effects of such work, yet it does not fully capture the ongoing, interactional processes through which journalists manage their emotional involvement in suicide coverage. Journalists reporting on suicide are not only exposed to trauma; they are also required to actively regulate their emotional responses in order to meet professional norms of balance, empathy, and restraint (Manasterski, 2025). This regulation is rarely spontaneous. Rather, it constitutes a form of sustained emotional labor embedded in everyday journalistic practice.

The concept of emotional labor, originally articulated by Hochschild (1983), provides a critical bridge between psychological outcomes and professional routines. Emotional labor refers to the management of feelings to produce publicly observable displays that align with occupational expectations. In journalism, this involves calibrating emotional distance and proximity: showing empathy without identification, conveying seriousness without sensationalism, and maintaining composure while engaging with distressing material. In the context of suicide reporting, emotional labor becomes particularly demanding, as journalists must suppress personal reactions, manage moral uncertainty, and negotiate their own vulnerability while simultaneously safeguarding the well-being of sources and audiences.

Existing research suggests that newsroom cultures often valorize resilience, emotional detachment, and productivity, while marginalizing discussions of distress or psychological vulnerability. As a result, the emotional labor required in suicide reporting remains largely invisible and unsupported, even as its cumulative effects contribute to compassion fatigue, burnout, and longer-term mental health risks. This invisibility is reinforced during crisis periods, when accelerated news cycles, staff reductions, and economic precarity further limit opportunities for reflection, peer support, and ethical deliberation.

Despite growing scholarly attention to trauma journalism, little empirical work has examined how journalists themselves interpret, negotiate, and reflect upon the emotional labor involved in suicide reporting over time. In particular, there is a lack of qualitative, longitudinal research that captures how repeated crisis contexts shape journalists’ ethical reasoning, coping strategies, and perceptions of their own mental health. Addressing this gap requires moving beyond outcome-based models of stress toward an analysis of everyday practices and meanings.

The present study responds to this need by examining journalists’ lived experiences of reporting on suicide across multiple crises. Elmir et al. (2011) proved that interview is the most appropriate method to research sensitive topics. Drawing on in-depth interviews, episodic ethnographic interviews, and participatory observations conducted in Greece, Spain, and Bulgaria, the analysis explores how systemic conditions, institutional constraints, and personal coping strategies intersect in the emotional labor of suicide reporting. By foregrounding journalists’ own accounts, this study seeks to illuminate how emotional strain accumulates over time and how the responsibility to break social silence around suicide coexists with the persistent silencing of journalists’ own vulnerability.

6. Relevance to Suicide Reporting and Crisis Contexts

Reporting on suicide brings together multiple high-risk dimensions of journalistic work: exposure to graphic harm, sustained interaction with bereaved families and survivors, and ongoing ethical deliberation regarding publicity, responsibility, and potential harm. These demands are frequently intensified by crisis-driven constraints, such as economic austerity, pandemics, armed conflict, or political instability, under which journalistic resources are reduced and professional pressures increase (Yu & Yang, 2024).

Within such contexts, the risk pathways identified in the literature on PTSD, secondary traumatic stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue are not merely transferable but often amplified (Newman et al., 2003). Suicide reporting during periods of societal crisis therefore represents a critical site for examining how psychological strain, emotional labor, and ethical responsibility intersect in journalistic practice. Integrating these analytical frameworks enables a more comprehensive understanding of how crisis conditions shape both the production of suicide-related news and its consequences for journalists’ mental health and professional functioning.

7. Research Questions

This study is guided by a set of research questions designed to examine how journalists work with suicide-related content in times of crisis and how such work affects their professional practices and personal well-being. The questions reflect the multi-level analytical framework adopted in this project, systemic, institutional, and individual, that address both ethical and psychological dimensions of suicide reporting.

7.1. RQ1: What Ethical Standards and Professional Criteria Guide Journalists When Reporting on Suicide?

This question explores how journalists interpret and operationalize ethical norms in everyday practice. It examines their familiarity with national and international reporting guidelines, their assessments of newsworthiness in suicide cases, and the tensions they navigate between public interest, editorial expectations, and harm-minimization principles.

7.2. RQ2: How Do Institutional and Systemic Factors Shape Journalistic Practices of Suicide Reporting During Periods of Crisis?

This question focuses on the broader structural conditions under which journalists operate. It considers how economic pressures, newsroom cultures, organizational policies, editorial routines, and crisis-related resource constraints influence decision-making processes, story selection, and the practical organization of suicide coverage.

7.3. RQ3: What Difficulties, Risks, and Emotional Challenges Do Journalists Encounter When Covering Suicide, and How Do These Experiences Affect Their Mental Health and Well-Being?

This question addresses journalists’ lived experiences of trauma exposure and emotional labor in suicide reporting. It examines the psychological demands of interacting with victims, survivors, and bereaved families, as well as journalists’ coping strategies, access to support mechanisms, and perceived short- and long-term mental health consequences.

7.4. RQ4: How Do Journalists Reflect on the Impact of Suicide Reporting on Their Personal Lives, Professional Identities, and Long-Term Well-Being?

This question captures journalists’ retrospective sense-making of their work over time, particularly across successive crisis contexts such as the financial crisis, the post-pandemic period, armed conflicts, and escalating cost-of-living pressures. By foregrounding journalists’ own reflections—often absent from public and professional discourse—this study seeks to illuminate how vulnerability, resilience, and professional identity are negotiated within the practice of suicide reporting.

8. Data Collection and Criteria for Country Selection

Fieldwork was conducted in Greece, Spain, and Bulgaria. An overview of media systems and economical factors in each country is presented in Table S1. Greece was selected as the primary case for studying social phenomena during the economic crisis of 2015 due to the severity of its austerity measures and the imminent risk of national bankruptcy. In 2013, approximately 45% of the population in Greece lived below the anchored1 poverty line (Matsaganis & Leventi, 2014). The situation attracted extensive attention within the European Union, particularly in the context of negotiations over financial bailout packages aimed at stabilizing the Greek economy. At the same time, international media widely reported on rising suicide rates alongside mass protests, further underscoring the relevance of Greece as a case study. Existing professional contacts between the researcher and staff members of the former public service broadcaster ERT also facilitated access to the field.

Spain was selected as a second case due to its comparable exposure to the economic crisis that began in 2008 (Petmesidou & Guillén, 2015). In 2013, approximately 25% of the Spanish population lived below the anchored poverty line (Matsaganis & Leventi, 2014). Similar to Greece, Spain experienced heightened social tensions, and international media reported increasing numbers of suicides, often linked to housing evictions. These similarities made Spain a relevant comparative case within Southern Europe. While Greece and Spain were included from the outset, Bulgaria was incorporated at a later stage as a result of a snowball sampling effect. During fieldwork travels in Southern Europe in 2015, discussions with media professionals and members of the public repeatedly brought attention to cases of suicide in public spaces in Bulgaria, particularly incidents of self-immolation. Furthermore, during a media policy event where preliminary findings of my study on suicide reporting in times of crisis were presented, several participants highlighted the Bulgarian context. Two main factors led to the inclusion of Bulgaria in this study: first, the country experienced waves of disruptive protests linked to economic hardship; second, media reports documented at least 17 cases of self-immolation associated with economic distress. Greece, Spain and Bulgaria are comparable cases as all three countries were significantly affected by the broader European economic crisis, which resulted in rising unemployment, increased poverty levels, and widespread social unrest. In each case, economic hardship was accompanied by public protests and heightened social tensions, creating conditions in which suicide became both a social issue and a topic of media attention. A comparative design was chosen to move beyond context-specific explanations and identify broader patterns in suicide reporting during times of crisis. A limitation of this study is that Portugal and Italy were not included, as cases were purposively selected for their shared crisis context and prominent media coverage of suicide.

Most of the empirical material derives from the financial crisis of 2015–2016, a period marked by economic insecurity and rising suicide rates in several regions, resulting in a comparative qualitative dataset spanning diverse media systems and crisis contexts summarized in Table S2. In total, 29 interviews were conducted with journalists and mental health professionals, 20 men and 9 women, generating over 36 h of recorded material. Table S3 presents a list of participant’s affiliations. Interviews lasted between 30 min and 2.5 h, were conducted primarily in English, with one interview carried out in Greek, and simultaneously translated by an accompanying person. All interviews followed a flexible, semi-structured format that encouraged participants to narrate their experiences of covering suicide across multiple crisis situations. Journalists repeatedly directed the researcher to specific organizations that provided mental health assistance, and they reported that they consulted them while covering the rising number of suicide cases and linking them to the crisis. Such organizations also provided their own statistics on suicides, which were perceived as more reliable during the period of attempts by the state to control the narrative of the situation. Interestingly, in times of cuts and austerity, e.g., KLIMAKA receiving stable funding, the state recognized the importance of their work. Their voice was strong in the media; therefore, the interviews were included in this study. Noteworthy is the fact that in Spain, a leading organization providing mental health assistance refused to give an interview as they were afraid of “twisting their words, as it has been the case previously in the media”. Silence is also a means of communication (Cava, 2023). Mental health professionals from interviewed organizations are also sources of emotional support for journalists covering disrupting events such as suicide, as they provide assistance and step in, filling the gap in media organizations.

Five of the interviewees were interviewed again after a few years in order to include the modified media environment and account for the growing/dominant role of social media that places increased pressure on journalists to produce faster and in more channels. Additionally, just after the worldwide economic crisis, the next state of emergency, the COVID-19 pandemic, followed; resulting from this was the cost of living crisis due to inflation, and the outbreak of armed conflicts produce additional pressures. In line with Parrott and McKeever (2024, p. 409), the researcher decided to conduct additional interviews after a few years since the initial field study as “The timing, (…), could not be better. Humans have access to more tools for mass communication than ever before, and mediated conversations about mental health appear to be increasing in both quantity and quality. The change is particularly interesting given how stagnant public perceptions and media representations have been for 75 years.” In addition to interviews, this study incorporates 20 observation protocols collected during eight field trips, reflecting five weeks of on-site engagement in total. These included both participatory and non-participatory observations of crisis-related events, such as demonstrations against austerity measures. Observational notes documented informal interactions, newsroom-adjacent encounters, and the emotional atmospheres shaping public life during these periods, thereby providing contextual grounding for the interview material and situating journalists’ accounts within broader societal conditions.

9. Reflexive Thematic Analysis

The empirical material was analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2021a, 2021b, 2022; Byrne, 2022), an approach that foregrounds interpretative engagement with the data and researcher reflexivity. In line with the principles of RTA, all coding and theme development was conducted by the author. This approach is methodologically appropriate, as RTA explicitly conceptualizes the researcher’s subjectivity as an analytic resource, enabling nuanced interpretation of both semantic content and latent meaning.

Analytic quality within RTA is ensured through transparent documentation of analytic decisions, iterative engagement with the data, and reflexive attention to how theoretical frameworks and empirical material inform one another, rather than through coder consensus.

10. Coding Process

All interviews with journalists, mental health professionals, two family members/close friends of suicide actors with high publicity, and a public authority representative from Greece—the deputy mayor of Thessaloniki—were transcribed in original wording and read repeatedly. Initial line-by-line coding captured both semantic dimensions such as workload, institutional support, newsroom routines or economic constraints, and latent meanings, for instance, moral distress, emotional identification or silencing of vulnerability. Codes were iteratively reviewed, clustered, and refined into broader themes, allowing for the integration of multiple perspectives on how crisis conditions shape journalistic work and mental health risks.

The analysis was guided by Hochschild’s (1983) concept of emotional labor, which conceptualizes professional roles as requiring the management of emotions to meet organizational, ethical, and societal expectations. Suicide reporting, particularly in high-profile cases or during periods of intensified crisis, emerged as a form of emotionally demanding work in which journalists balance empathy and professional composure under structural constraints and public scrutiny. In my data, two such events of suicide in public occurred: a retired pharmacist in Greece who shot himself in front of the Greek parliament at Syntagma Square in 2012, and the self-immolation of Palmen Goranov in Bulgaria as political protest in 2013. Accounts from family members and friends were used to contextualize journalists’ narratives and to strengthen interpretation of the systemic and economic conditions shaping their emotional and ethical labor. The analysis identified eight interrelated themes, presented in Supplementary Material Table S1, that map onto this study’s research questions, illustrating how ethical decision-making, emotional labor, and mental health risks in suicide reporting are produced through the interaction of crisis conditions, newsroom organization, and journalists’ lived experience.

11. Results: Crisis, Emotional Labor and Suicide Reporting

Journalists working in Spain, Greece, and Bulgaria described their professional experiences as unfolding under conditions shaped by overlapping economic, social, and institutional pressures. All three contexts were marked by prolonged economic instability, which translated into newsroom precarity, reduced staffing, and intensified workloads. Rather than approaching these national cases comparatively, the analysis treats them as empirically distinct yet analytically connected sites through which crisis is experienced, narrated, and normalized in journalistic work. Crisis emerges here not as an episodic disruption, but as a constitutive condition that reshapes ethical reasoning, emotional labor, and mental health risks.

Public authority accounts from Greece emphasized the structural consequences of economic austerity, pointing to persistent limitations in institutional capacity that directly affected newsroom staffing and organizational support mechanisms.

In Spain, an editor from theCatalan Public Service Broadcaster stated “Do you see this newsroom? It used to be full with people, very vibrant place. Now it is only few of us making the news.”

12. Economic Precarity and the Normalization of Overload

Across interviews, economic precarity was described as a defining feature of journalistic work rather than a temporary condition. Journalists reported reduced staffing levels, unstable contracts, and expanded workloads as routine aspects of their professional environment. Mental health specialists corroborated these accounts, framing journalists’ distress as a predictable outcome of sustained overwork rather than an individual inability to cope. A journalist from a Greek independent outlet and activist pictured the following: “Look, we used to have the best country to live, we had everything: good weather, good climate, good food and good money. Now everything is gone.”

Emotional strain accumulated gradually, shaped by the chronic normalization of overload and the absence of institutional space for recovery or reflection. Mental health risks were rarely attributed to singular traumatic encounters. Instead, they emerged through prolonged exposure to demanding working conditions in which time pressure, insecurity, and emotional regulation became embedded in everyday routines.

A public authority figure from Greece stated “It is not the typical thing people of the middle class [journalists] became poor.”

Journalist from Greece claimed that “Overnight our status changed from the countries elites to “pirates”, while we just continue our service”. This interviewee refers to the precedent of closure of the public service channel ERT due to austerity measures in 2013. A group of journalists remained in the headquarters and created, unpaid, the online channel ERT Open, called by the politicians a pirate station, as no license was obtained.

13. Quick Production and Erosion of Reflexive Practice

Crisis conditions were consistently associated with accelerated newsroom routines. Journalists described production environments in which speed and volume constrained ethical deliberation and limited opportunities for emotional processing. When covering sensitive topics such as suicide, these pressures intensified tensions between professional responsibility and organizational demands.

A journalist from Spain, a Catalan Public Service Broadcaster, stated, “Before the crisis and the shortcuts I used to have time for my story. I could do my research, talk to the people and there was a whole team for the past production. Now I rush from one topic to another, from suicide due to mass eviction and unemployment to corrupted politics and everything that comes up in the meantime”.

High-profile suicide cases in Greece and Bulgaria were repeatedly referenced as moments when accelerated production cycles collided with ethical and emotional strain. Journalists were required to act quickly while managing moral uncertainty, proximity to grief, and public scrutiny. Remarkably, this pressure was exercised from outside as international media, present in the country to cover protests against austerity measures and the bailout from Toika, started reporting on the cases. National media was silent at first. Mental health specialists noted that such events produced cumulative emotional effects across newsrooms, extending beyond those directly involved in reporting.

14. Institutional Withdrawal and the Individual Character of Vulnerability

Across all three contexts, journalists reported limited institutional support for mental health. Formal mechanisms for debriefing, counseling, or peer support were limited. In this vacuum, emotional distress was framed as an individual matter to be managed privately rather than as a structural consequence of crisis-driven journalistic work.

Mental health specialists described this pattern as a form of institutional withdrawal, while public authority accounts in Greece linked it to broader systemic constraints associated with prolonged economic crisis. As a result, vulnerability became both normalized and invisible within newsroom cultures, reinforcing professional norms that privilege endurance and composure over care.

“Moreover in crisis, demand on services, at the same there is decrease in funding for services, so available services cannot meet the demand.”

Psychologist from KLIMAKA, Greece.

15. Closeness to Social Suffering and Emotional Identification

Reporting on suicide during periods of economic and social crisis intensified journalists’ sense of closeness to social suffering. Journalists described difficulties maintaining professional distance when suicide stories resonated with broader experiences of insecurity, precarity, and loss within their communities.

Journalist from Spain, independent crowed funded online media outlet: “Look, journalism is male-dominated profession, many of us would never show emotion as we see it a weakness. The common way to deal with disturbing topics we cover, was to go to the pub for a debrief and drink a few shots. It has changed now, on the one hand there is less time for socializing and on the other many of us would consider consulting a specialist and not to feel bad about it. It is a slow process but it happens.”

Interviews with family members in Greece and with the close friend of a suicide victim in Bulgaria illuminated how journalists’ work intersected with the emotional realities of those directly affected. These accounts underscored the ethical and emotional intensity of such encounters and highlighted how journalistic presence could simultaneously offer recognition and reproduce emotional strain. Mental health specialists observed that journalists’ embeddedness in crisis-affected communities heightened emotional identification and moral tension.

Family member of a person who died by suicide in public, Greece: “He did in not because of something but in order to do something. I am not writing only for myself.” Friend of Palmen Goranov who set himself on fire in public, Bulgaria: “There are 3 phases of media coverage of protest suicide in the media: complete denial, hero and complete ignorance. (…)I prefer to think of Palmen as Jan Palach”.

A journalist and journalism scholar from Bulgaria observed that, paradoxically, time pressure resulted in improved coverage: “2013 people got inspired when they saw in the media that there were protests and self-immolations and more and more cases occurred. The coverage was ok but because the media had no time not because they are so ethical!”

16. Ethical Commitment Under Conditions of Constraint

Journalists articulated a strong ethical commitment to minimizing harm when reporting on suicide. Distance towards media guidelines imposed on journalists from outside, for instance, by health professionals, was visible across interviews. Rather, individual commitment to ethical standards guided interviewees: “You have general ethics, your personal ethics” pointed out a journalist in Greece. However, crisis conditions frequently constrained journalists’ ability to uphold these standards without personal cost. A journalist and scholar in journalism studies stated, due to the crisis, that “Bulgarian media is populated by people who feel superior to the general public and they are among the powerful media (…) My problem with Bulgarian media coverage is that out of 13 articles, 2.5 were sympathetic to the victims, they all blamed victims. Not forgivable. This is kind of diagnosis, you have journalists that cannot react on a problem of human suffering. (…) One of the reasons why I am not an active journalist.”

Mental health professionals emphasized the psychological burden of sustaining ethical responsibility in the absence of institutional protection, while public authority accounts pointed to structural limitations, such as resource shortages and organizational fragility, that complicated ethical decision-making. Collectively, these accounts suggest experiences consistent with moral distress, in which journalists are unable to fully act in accordance with professional values without incurring emotional harm.

Radio journalist, Greece: “When you capture a suicide, you cover it, you learn about suicide either from a note or from family members.”

KLIMAKA specialist, Greece: “We had a lot of interviews for the media asking about suicide, especially 2012”.

Additionally Greek journalists from ERT Open reported that there was an unwritten policy in the beginning of the economic crisis coming from politics not to cover suicide: “nobody will tell a politician from the government called me to do that but the editors in charge would say to their teams it is expected that we do not cover the suicide that were communicated by the people themselves as motivated by the economic crisis”.

17. Emotional Labor Across Crisis Contexts

Across interviews and observations, mental health risks emerged through the interaction of economic precarity, accelerated production, limited institutional support, ethical responsibility, and sustained proximity to social suffering. High-profile and personally resonant suicide cases further intensified emotional labor by increasing visibility, moral pressure, and emotional engagement.

Framed through the lens of emotional labor, journalists’ accounts illustrate ongoing practices of surface and deep acting: maintaining professional composure while engaging empathetically with vulnerable sources and managing moral ambiguity under structural constraint. Emotional labor was not episodic but cumulative, shaped by successive crises and reinforced by newsroom cultures that individualize vulnerability. A radio journalist in Greece said “I think the limits are the limits that the family sets. It is not matter of me, it is matter of information, matter of you say it or you don’t say it.”

By integrating journalists’ experiences with perspectives from mental health professionals, such as KLIMAKA in Greece, affected individuals, and public authorities, the analysis demonstrates that mental health risks in suicide reporting are structurally produced rather than individually located. Crisis conditions reshape professional norms, ethical expectations, and emotional demands, rendering journalists’ vulnerability both pervasive and largely unacknowledged.

A journalist from an independent online media in Barcelona concluded, “I think media or the press in Catalonia but also I think in Spain is very depressed, like in 2 or 3 crises at the same time.”

18. Discussion

This study examined journalists’ experiences of reporting on suicide in Spain, Greece, and Bulgaria, focusing on how crisis conditions shape ethical decision-making, emotional labor, and mental health risks. By foregrounding journalists’ own accounts and situating them within overlapping economic, social, and institutional crises, the analysis moves beyond audience orientated approaches to suicide reporting and contributes to the scholarship on mental health in journalism by illuminating the structural production of vulnerability. The results show shared patterns across three countries but also illustrate significant differences. There are two common observations deriving from the data in all countries:

(1)

Participants show emotional exhaustion.

(2)

Interviewees point out the failure of the state and their mechanism in facing the consequences of the crisis.

Furthermore, the data shows significant differences in trust in the collective power of society and its ability to recover. Whereas in Greece this belief was continuously reported, the approach in Bulgaria was rather individualistic. This was despite the protests of 2013 that created, for a season, an atmosphere of collective action. After few years, this was not reported any more in Bulgaria, while this feeling persists in Greece.

18.1. RQ1: Ethical Standards and Professional Criteria in Suicide Reporting

Among the three countries under research, only in Bulgaria can one find reference to suicide reporting in journalistic ethical guidelines. The National Council for Journalistic Ethics in point 2.8 alerts that details about suicide methods can lead to an imitation effect and should be therefore avoided. The findings indicate that journalists possess a strong normative awareness of ethical standards governing suicide reporting. Among all participants, the most known guideline on media coverage of suicide is the one published by the WHO; the amended 4th edition was published in 2023 and was enriched by a new section on “Specific considerations for online, digital and social media in social/digital media” (WHO, 2023). However, these standards were not applied as fixed rules but were continuously negotiated in practice. Ethical decision-making emerged as situational, shaped by time pressure, editorial hierarchies, and crisis-driven production routines.

This supports previous research suggesting that ethical guidelines function less as prescriptive tools and more as interpretative frameworks within journalistic practice. Under crisis conditions, ethical responsibility becomes a source of emotional labor, as journalists are required to balance professional values with organizational constraints. Rather than ethical failure, the findings point to ethical strain, where adherence to professional norms entails personal emotional cost. New, however, is the evidence of the persisting unwritten rule in Greece not to cover suicide, which was reported by the majority of the participants and can be proven with the Syntagma case, which was reported internationally first.

18.2. RQ2: Institutional and Systemic Conditions Shaping Suicide Coverage

Addressing the second research question, the analysis demonstrates that institutional and systemic factors play a decisive role in shaping suicide reporting practices. Economic precarity, newsroom understaffing, accelerated production cycles, and limited organizational support were not experienced as exceptional crisis responses but as enduring conditions of journalistic work.

These structural pressures influenced story selection, depth of coverage, and the capacity for ethical reflexivity. Importantly, institutional withdrawal from mental health support was repeatedly described as a systemic outcome of prolonged crisis rather than managerial neglect alone. This finding reinforces calls within journalism studies to conceptualize mental health risks as organizational and policy issues, embedded in broader media systems and labor conditions.

18.3. RQ3: Emotional Challenges, Mental Health Risks, and Lived Experience

In relation to the third research question, this study highlights a range of emotional challenges associated with suicide reporting, including cumulative stress, moral distress, and sustained proximity to social suffering. Journalists’ accounts align with the existing literature on secondary traumatic stress and burnout but also extend it by demonstrating how these risks are intensified in suicide reporting during periods of societal crisis.

Emotional labor provides a crucial lens for understanding these dynamics. Journalists engaged in continuous management of empathy, detachment, and composure, often without institutional recognition or support. High-profile suicide cases and repeated exposure to grief amplified emotional demands, particularly when journalists identified with the social conditions affecting those they reported on. Mental health risks thus emerged not primarily from isolated traumatic encounters but from the cumulative burden of emotionally regulated work under structural constraint.

18.4. RQ4: Long-Term Consequences and Professional Sense-Making

The longitudinal component of this study offers insight into how journalists reflect on the long-term impact of suicide reporting on their personal lives and professional identities. Rather than describing recovery or resolution, participants emphasized accumulation: emotional strain persisted and was reactivated across successive crises. Over time, journalists developed coping strategies, but these were often individualized and precarious, shaped by the absence of formal support structures. These retrospective reflections reveal how suicide reporting becomes integrated into journalists’ professional self-understanding, influencing perceptions of resilience, responsibility, and vulnerability. The findings challenge narratives of journalistic strength by showing how endurance is achieved through emotional labor that remains largely invisible and unacknowledged within newsroom cultures.

By integrating emotional labor theory with research on trauma journalism, this study advances understanding of how mental health risks are produced in crisis contexts. Emotional labor is shown to be both a coping mechanism and a source of vulnerability, particularly when ethical responsibility cannot be fully enacted due to structural constraints. Experiences described by participants resonate with concepts of moral distress, suggesting that journalists may experience harm not because they lack ethical awareness, but because they are unable to act on it without personal cost.

19. Conclusions

This study highlights a central paradox of contemporary journalism: journalists are tasked with breaking social silence around suicide while their own emotional vulnerability remains largely unacknowledged. Focusing on journalists’ lived experiences across Greece, Spain, and Bulgaria, the findings show that economic precarity, newsroom understaffing, accelerated production cycles, and limited organizational support constrained how suicide could be reported, producing (in judgment of the interviewees) partial narratives and ethical tension. Journalists navigated continuous emotional labor, balancing empathy for sources with professional distance, often without institutional recognition or support. Results from the current study support previous findings about exposure to repeated suicide cases leading to cumulative stress, moral distress, and long-term emotional strain, managed primarily through individualized coping strategies (Šimunjak, 2023). This study adds to existing knowledge by capturing the momentum and emotional states of the interviewees. During the interviews, the researcher repeatedly observed brief emotional outbursts, which were less related to the sensitivity of suicide reporting and more connected to the participants’ own socio-economic positions during the crisis.

Concluding from the interviews, journalists’ attitudes towards suicide reporting has not significantly changed due to their presence on social media; at the same time, they use the content to inform their stories. Moreover, the journalists recognized the impact of social media on intensifying discussion about suicide and mental health issues in general. The topic moved from the private sphere to more open discussion in public as well. These findings are consistent with observations from the Special Issue of Mass Communication & Society on Media and Mental Health published in 2024. Furthermore, some of the journalists mentioned that they recognized impact of social media on their well-being and that they search for healthier usage of these channels, despite the media landscape and pressures. In light of increased relevance of social media, especially Twitter, Facebook and diverse blogs, trust in the media has fallen lower and lower. In Greece, journalists that were known from traditional media, print or broadcast, became untrustworthy to the public; they had to face accusations of being biased and supporting the establishment responsible for the crisis (IPI, 2016), and they were also subjected to physical assaults.

These findings demonstrate that mental health risks in journalism emerge not only from exposure to traumatic content but also from the sustained effort to manage ethically charged reporting under structural constraints. This was also demonstrated by some of the journalists who, despite their passion for journalism, have left the profession since the outbreak of the economic crises. Responsible reporting requires an organizational environment that provides time for reflection, peer discussion, and access to mental health support. In a study by Subramanian (2014) of top journalists, prize winners for covering mental health issues reported that time given to them to produce the story was crucial for the high quality of their work. In my study, lack of time is one of the most frequently mentioned factors creating pressure and reducing work satisfaction. Understaffing of editorial teams increases this pressure and reduces options of peer support.

This study displays the great need for appropriate training and trauma-informed literacy. Preferably, such modules should be integrated into the curricula of journalism programs in order to equip them for the challenges the stories bring sooner or later. As Šimunjak (2023) proves, psychological capital for journalists can be built.

20. Limitations and Future Research

This study is based on qualitative data from three national contexts and does not aim for statistical generalization. However, its strength lies in the depth and longitudinal character of the data. Future research could expand this approach to additional media systems, examine newsroom level interventions, or explore how audience engagement with suicide reporting interacts with journalists’ emotional labor.