Malaysia's guidelines for reporting, sharing suicide-related content well received globally
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's guidelines for reporting and sharing suicide-related content have received positive feedback both domestically and internationally, including after they were presented at the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) 2025 World Congress in Vienna recently.
Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Content Forum (CMCF) chief executive officer Mediha Mahmood said the collaborative approach between doctors, psychiatrists and media practitioners in developing the guidelines attracted the attention of the international community.
'The external response has also been very encouraging. They are impressed with how we can collaborate between doctors, psychiatrists and the media because the whole world has issues about getting media cooperation,' she said on Bernama Radio's Jendela Fikir programme today.
At the local level, she said, CMCF has received many requests to hold workshops and training within just a week after the guidelines were launched on June 3.
'When we hold workshops or training with interactive dialogue, they can see the case studies we present to understand how we can bring these guidelines to life in daily work.
'CMCF not only conducts training with media practitioners but also with influencers and content creators to build understanding among all,' she said.
Regarding implementation and enforcement, Mediha said CMCF emphasises more on educating and guiding the community, but action can be taken if there are repeated violations.
'Anyone who sees content that violates these guidelines can file a complaint, and the complaints bureau will see if it is wrong or not.
'We will usually give advice, but if the case is repeated and gets worse over time, there is a compound of up to RM50,000, but compound action is rarely taken because we want our community to know for themselves what is good and not,' she said.
According to Mediha, CMCF also conducts engagement with schools and communities to encourage references to authentic content and build a culture of ethical content dissemination
She said CMCF is currently discussing with the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) to introduce a new term that is more suitable to replace the use of the phrase 'bunuh diri' in the Malay language.
'The word in English is 'suicide', but in the Malay language, there is no word that can replace suicide yet,' she said.
The guidelines, launched by Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil, are the first of their kind in the world, developed inclusively with various parties, including the Ministry of Health, media practitioners and individuals with real-life experience, and supported through a public consultation process.
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