The Bay of Plenty Coroner is calling for the issues around the reporting of suicide to be urgently addressed.
Wallace Bain says coroners, the media and the communities of New Zealand need clearer direction.
He is concerned about a recent editorial in the Medical Journal which greatly criticises the calls for more openness, saying it can lead to copy-cat suicides.
Dr Bain wants the Government to urgently evaluate the recent change to media guidelines and its impacts.
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The comments come in his findings on the self-inflicted deaths
of five young people in Kawerau between October 2010 and February
2011.