The death of US actor and comedian Robin Williams has prompted a debate about the way suicide is reported in the media.
Following Williams' death on Monday, Samaritans emailed media organisations "strongly advising them" to follow the charity's guidelines on the reporting of suicide.
In particular, the charity urged editors to "be mindful that celebrity suicides have a higher risk of encouraging copycat behaviour".
In 2008, the World Health Organization concluded: "Vulnerable individuals may be influenced to engage in imitative behaviours by reports of suicide, particularly if the coverage is extensive, prominent, sensationalist and/or explicitly describes the method of suicide."
But it also observed that "responsible reporting may serve to educate the public about suicide and may encourage those at risk of suicide to seek help".
Guidelines from Samaritans, the Press Complaints Commission's editors' code of practice, the Ofcom broadcasting code and the BBC's editorial guidelines all also advise against going into detail about the methods used.
Now Samaritans has complained about "excessive detail" in some of Wednesday's national newspapers about how Robin Williams took his own life.
"The media has come a long way over the past few years in terms of sensitively reporting suicide, which is why we are concerned to see that there have been a large number of articles detailing unnecessary information about the nature of Robin Williams' death," it said in a statement.
"We are taking steps to address our concerns," it added.
Despite this, Samaritans' Sal Lalji told the BBC News website: "I'm pleased to say that, generally, we don't see too many articles that we consider to have excessive detail.
"But often we'll see lots of stories with simplistic reasons for why a person might take their own lives."
Samaritans says over-simplification of the causes of suicide can be misleading and is unlikely to reflect accurately the complexity of suicide.
"Our advice would be talk about the wider issues, like mental health issues or the complex nature of suicide," adds Ms Lalji.
(BBC)
