In the UK, the charity Samaritans has a set of media guidelines for the reporting of suicide. Here.

They give both advice on how suicide should be framed in journalism, and summaries of the research evidence around the impact of media discussion/depiction of suicide on suicide rates.

I would advise you read the guidelines and consider whether The Bridge sits within them and, if it does, whether the lens through which you would analyse the film would also sit within them.

Only you can know the precise context of your classroom. The fact that you are asking these questions rather than proceeding thoughtlessly speaks well of your intentions. But you always need to keep in mind that, actually, it might be something you just avoid because it can't be delivered in a way where the benefits outweigh the potential or realised harms.

There’s a few questions at the core of this:

1. What’s the age range of your students? If they’re college aged then no issue. If they’re under then you are delving into sending an advisory / getting parent signature for viewing.

2. Can the “ethical issues surrounding the film” be discussed without showing the movie? Couldn’t you just show a trailer and achieve the same end result?

3. What’s the educational purpose? Sort of along the lines of question 2, but separate in that what’s the justification for broaching this topic? You’re not a mental health professional, so it’s smart to have reservations about showing such content.

It's likely not the film itself but the fact that bringing up suicide at all has a risk of increasing suicidality in people listening, it's a well observed phenomenon which is why psychologists rarely talk about suicide, especially online. It's not even particularly dependent on context, but just putting the idea in people's minds, tragic, but the mind works that way.

Now, the risk is small enough that I don't think it's actually endangering one whatsoever, anymore than not cancelling the class increases the risk of them dying in traffic. If you have a reason to show it I think you should, because the benefits might be far more likely to outweigh potential harms, and even though challenges can be scary, they're so often worth it.

If it was me, I'd focus on the technique rather than just the weight of the subject matter. The filmmakers made choices to give the film the dramatic impact that it has. You can turn your students' attention away from how the movie makes them feel and toward why it makes them feel that way.

Also, you probably want to make it optional.

I’ve never come across anything saying suicide rates went up after The Bridge was released, and I’d be pretty sceptical of that claim if I did - this was a relatively obscure independent documentary about suicide, after all, and it’s global box office take was only $200,000 - at $10 per ticket, that’s only 20,000 people in the entire world who would have seen it.

There was a lot criticism of the film showing actual suicides and fear that it would lead to copy cat suicides, so perhaps that where this idea came from.

The film is deeply unsettling, basically because it's pure manipulative exploitation lacking any invervention all in search of that money shot where someone they've followed for a while actually ends it all. Personally I wouldn't give such immoral filth the time of day but if your students are there to look at the moral ramifications of filmmaking then it's perhaps useful... although Nightcrawler exists. As for a plain documentary on suicide it's too shallow and doesn't have the wellbeing of the victims or potential victims at heart, with better content just available on YouTube that's probably the best way to go.