The press is breaking the suicide taboo but still uses stigmatizing metaphors

Suicide is a major public health concern. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it is responsible for over 700,000 deaths a year. In Spain, it is the leading cause of death from non-natural causes, above traffic accidents. The number of suicides in recent years has reached record-breaking highs, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2022, 4,227 people (74% of them men and 26% women) died from this cause. In other words, an average of 12 people a day committed suicide. 

Suicide has traditionally been taboo, bringing stigma both to those taking their own lives and to their families, who suffer shame and guilt in addition to the grief of losing a loved one. According to a study by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) analysing discourse on suicide in the press, and specifically the metaphors used to discuss it, there has been a paradigm shift: compared to the past, when newspaper style guides prohibited mentioning it (to avoid emulation suicides), nowadayssuicide is discussed openly, to remove the stigma around it.

Marta Coll-Florit, PhD in the Information and Knowledge Society, and researcher at the GRIAL research group of the UOC-TRÀNSIC research centre, led a study titled Suicide Metaphors in the Press: Breaking the Taboo (Metaphor and Symbol, 2026), published in open access, presenting the findings of an analysis of discourse on suicide in the El País, La Vanguardia and ABC newspapers between 2020 and 2023. 

Coll-Florit was motivated to carry out the study by a combination of personal experience and scholarly interest: "Having unfortunately experienced the impact of suicide in my own family, I'm very aware of how powerful the taboo around it is. Although suicide has been studied at length in disciplines such as psychology and sociology, it's still practically uncharted territory in the field of cognitive linguistics," she said.

Individual phenomenon versus collective responsibility: two contrasting approaches

Coll-Florit used corpus linguistics methods to analyse 243 news items about suicide in three newspapers with divergent ideologies. The study identified 509 metaphors and found that the political ideology of the newspaper did not affect the approach to suicide. The most common metaphor for suicide was war, an enemy to be fought. Associations with illness were also used, with words such as epidemic, pandemic or contagion. The researcher believes that these terms were influenced by the pandemic that was ongoing at the time. Other metaphors referred to suicide as a journey, a criminal offence or a hidden object. 

"The metaphors used most often in news stories about suicide serve to confront the silence. For example, the war metaphor can portray the taboo as an enemy to be beaten, and hidden object metaphors can condemn the fact that suicide has been covered up. Also, talking about it is seen as an antidote, within the illness metaphor, or as a necessary path for prevention, with the journey metaphor. The silence is even personified as a living organism that has been silenced, reinforcing the idea that breaking the taboo is both liberating and beneficial for public health," said Coll-Florit, who is also a member of the UOC's Faculty of Arts and Humanities. 

The press's use of metaphors when referring to suicide is not a matter of style or ornamentation. It actually relates to a cognitive mechanism. The metaphors used are not neutral, and analysis shows the type of depiction of suicide they convey. The UOC researcher found that suicide is sometimes presented as a purely individual phenomenon, for example when it is described as an escape or a crime: "This places all the focus on the individual's decision. An example of this is the use of metaphors for suicide as homicide against oneself, with no mention of the shortcomings of the system. Furthermore, they evoke ideas of cowardice, weakness or selfishness. This stigmatizes victims and leaves their families burdened with a devastating sense of guilt," said Coll-Florit. 

Other metaphors – fortunately, the majority – focus on collective responsibility and can have a positive effect:"Framing suicide as a collective challenge or a shared journey of prevention, rather than an individual process, shifts the attribution of blame away from the people directly affected by it," said the researcher. Coll-Florit has extensive experience in analysing how conceptual metaphors can help understand mental disorders such as depression or schizophrenia. In this field, she coordinated the first Mental Health Metaphor Dictionary, a UOC initiative to raise public awareness of these disorders.

A tragedy that can be avoided with everyone's support

The researcher believes that the focus must shift away from individual responsibility towards collective responsibility: "We must stop viewing suicide as an individual struggle and reframe it as a public health issue that requires a social and health support network. Responsible journalism must avoid presenting suicide as a way out for mental suffering." This can be achieved by providing context and expert opinions and, above all, by "conveying the idea that, with the right help and resources, suicide can be prevented". 

Reference article

Coll-Florit, M. (2026). Suicide Metaphors in the Press: Breaking the Taboo. Metaphor and Symbol, 41(2), 175–191. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2025.2580642

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