Audience responses to suicide in a television drama

This chapter examines audience responses to the Paracetamol Overdose story in the BBC’s Casualty programme of 2 November 1996. The results are drawn from a qualitative study using focus groups to analyse the factors which influence the recall, understanding, acceptance or rejection of the message about the overdose. The study also identifies other sources of information about Paracetamol and the conditions under which these are likely to have a major impact upon audience beliefs and behaviour. We also undertook a second study of attitudes to accidental injury and decisions made to attend A&E departments (see chapter 7). Both studies used the same focus groups interviewed at the same time.