Social Media and Suicide (original) (raw)
Related papers
Social media and adolescent suicide: exploring risks, benefits, and opportunities for prevention
2019
During the same time period that suicide rose to the 2 nd leading cause of death among adolescents, the proportion of youth who use social media multiple times per day has doubled, and now encompasses 70% of US adolescents. These are concerning trends, because maladaptive use of social media is associated with adverse mental health effects with particularly concerning ramifications for adolescent suicidal risk. While this linkage to suicidal risk remains evident, adolescents report notable benefits to use of social media, including the provision of social support and connectedness. This dissertation focuses on three critical gaps in the literature aimed to explore x Preface Thank you to the youth and parents who gave their time to make this dissertation possible, and to Ms. Poling and the clinicians at the STAR Center who were generous with their time in supporting recruitment. I'm indebted to my committee, Drs. Bear, Brent, and Mair, without whom this would not have happened. Dr. Brent, thank you for your mentorship over the past decade, which has inspired my passion for our field. To those who gave of their time to advise on this dissertation: Drs. Radovic, Goldstein, Stepp, Scott and Levenson, as well as Ms. Folb who offered guidance on the literature search, your guidance has been invaluable. Thank you to Dr. Zelazny for co-facilitating and coding focus group and interview data, Mr. Sewall for coding and rating articles for the literature review, and to Ms. Yemula for her assistance with transcription. And finally, thank you to Dr. Jeanette Trauth, my committee chair, for your terrific guidance and support throughout this process. This dissertation was generous supported through funding received from the Once Upon a Time Foundation, Dr. Brent's Endowment in Suicide Studies, and the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends, especially my husband, David, for his constant love and support, and my work family at Bellefield Towers.
Social media, self-harm and suicide
BJPsych Bulletin
Summary Use of social media by people with mental health problems, and especially those who are prone to self-harm, has potential advantages and disadvantages. This poses a dilemma about how and by how much the form and content of social media sites should be regulated. Unfortunately, participation in the public debate about this dilemma has been restricted and high-profile discussion of necessary action has been focused almost entirely on how much suppression of content is justified. Professional bodies, including the Royal College of Psychiatrists, should be doing much more than they are to shape how the debate is conducted.
Social media and suicide prevention: findings from a stakeholder survey
Shanghai archives of psychiatry, 2015
Suicide is a leading cause of death, particularly among young adults. The rapid growth of social media and its heavy use by young adults presents new challenges and opportunities for suicide prevention. Social media sites are commonly used for communicating about suicide-related behavior with others, which raises the possibility of using social media to help prevent suicide. However, the use of social media varies widely between different suicide prevention advocates. The role this type of intervention should play in a community's overall suicide prevention strategy remains a matter of debate. Explore the ways in which stakeholders use social media for suicide prevention and assess their views about the potential utility of social media as a suicide prevention tool. A 12-week stakeholder consultation that involved the online administration and completion of surveys by 10 individuals who conduct research about suicide and social media, 13 organizations that use social media for s...
Social media and suicide prevention: a systematic review
Early Intervention in Psychiatry, 2015
Aim: Social media platforms are commonly used for the expression of suicidal thoughts and feelings, particularly by young people. Despite this, little is known about the ways in which social media can be used for suicide prevention. The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review to identify current evidence pertaining to the ways in which social media are currently used as a tool for suicide prevention. Methods: Medline, psychInfo, Embase, CINHAL, and the Cochrane Library were searched for articles published between 1991 and April 2014. English language articles with a focus on suicide-related behaviour and social media were included. No exclusion was placed on study design. Results: Thirty studies were included; four described the development of social media sites designed for suicide prevention, six examined the potential of social media in terms of its ability to reach or identify people at risk of suicide; 15 examined the ways in which people used social media for suicide prevention-related purposes; and five examined the experiences of people who had used social media sites for suicide prevention purposes. No intervention studies were identified. Conclusion: Social media platforms can reach large numbers of otherwise hard-to-engage individuals, may allow others to intervene following an expression of suicidal ideation online, and provide an anonymous, accessible and non-judgmental forum for sharing experiences. Challenges include difficulties controlling user behaviour and accurately assessing risk, issues relating to privacy and confidentiality and the possibility of contagion. Social media appears to hold significant potential for suicide prevention; however additional research into its safety and efficacy is required.
International Journal of Knowledge Discovery in Bioinformatics
While many studies have explored the use of social media and behavioral changes of individuals, few examined the utility of using social media for suicide detection and prevention. The study by Jashinsky et al. identified specific language patterns associated with a set of twelve suicide risk factors. The authors extended these methods to assess the significance of the language used on Twitter for suicide detection. This article quantifies the use of Twitter to express suicide related language, and its potential to detect users at high risk of suicide. The authors searched Twitter for tweets indicative of 12 suicide risk factors. This paper divided Twitter users into two groups: “high risk” and “at risk” based on two of the risk factors (“self-harm” and “prior suicide attempts”) and examined language patterns by computing co-occurrences of terms in tweets which helped identify relationships between suicide risk factors in both groups.
Social Media and Suicide: A Review of Technology-Based Epidemiology and Risk Assessment
Abstract INTRODUCTION: Suicide is a significant public health problem among teenagers and young adults in the United States, placing significant stress on emergency departments (EDs) to effectively screen and assess for the presence of suicidality in a rapid yet efficient manner. METHODS: A literature search was performed using PubMed and MEDLINE with the following terms: "Social media," "Suicide," "Facebook," "Twitter," "MySpace," "Snapchat," "Ethics," "Digital Media," and "Forums and Blog." Data were extracted from each article, specifically the sample size, study setting, and design. Only English-language studies were included. We reviewed the reference lists of included articles for additional studies, as well. Abstracts, unpublished data, and duplicate articles were excluded. RESULTS: A total of 363 articles met our initial criteria. Studies older than 10 years and/or in a language other than English were removed. After review, a total of 31 peer-reviewed articles were included in the study. Teenagers and young adults often fail to disclose risk factors to physicians, despite sharing them with the public on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Therefore, physician access to a patient's social media can assist in identifying suicidal ideation and/or acts. CONCLUSIONS: Viewing a patient's social media accounts can help ED physicians gain perspective into his or her mental health status and identify those at risk for suicide; however, ethical and privacy concerns associated with this method of data gathering make implementation of such a practice controversial. To justify its use, formal prospective studies analyzing if and how physician access to a patient's social media influences care should be performed.
SUICIDE IN INTERNET POSTS: PERCEPTION OF SOCIAL NETWORK USERS (Atena Editora)
SUICIDE IN INTERNET POSTS: PERCEPTION OF SOCIAL NETWORK USERS (Atena Editora), 2023
Throughout history, the phenomenon of suicide has been discussed and questioned from various perspectives that contributed to the formation of multiple conceptions about the theme. Currently, from a scientific point of view, this phenomenon is seen as a scientific problem, and also a public health problem. The Internet today has brought an extensive range of information resources and services that can be easily accessed by those who have it. It provides a platform that enables people to express themselves freely, sharing experiences and reports about personal experiences and feelings in the various social networks that it allows them to form. Among the themes addressed on these networks is suicide. The present study aimed to perform a phenomenological analysis of the discourses about suicide on virtual social networks, considering that the publications made generally reflect the individual's perception about the phenomenon addressed. The research is exploratory in nature and qualitative in approach, and sought the discourses about suicide in the social networks Twitter and Facebook. From the data analysis, meaning units that relate suicide around themes such as religion, courage and cowardice, depression, failure of society, unbearable pain, and the need for support to individuals with suicidal behavior emerged. In this communication, we intend to present the results of this study, which shows how people in general understand suicide.
Traditional and new media's influence on suicidal behavior and contagion
Behavioral sciences & the law, 2018
The role of nonfictional and fictional media in suicide contagion has been well established, ostensibly beginning with the publication of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774. In recent decades, the emergence of several new forms of media (e.g. websites, social media, blogs, smartphone applications) has revolutionized the communication and social interaction paradigms. This article reviews "the Werther effect" (or suicide contagion related to media), special populations who are more influential or susceptible, current media reporting guidelines and their effectiveness, and the latest research on new media and its effect on suicide and suicide contagion. The aim is to update recommendations on how to mitigate the potential negative effects of both traditional and new media on suicidal behavior and suicide contagion.
“Werther effect” – Media, a potential preventive tool for suicidal behaviour
Kerala Journal of Psychiatry, 2020
Suicide, with all its psychosocial impacts, is a major public health problem and needs prompt preventive approaches considering its increasing magnitude. In this era of the internet, people started to rely more on data available at their fingertips than the print media. And this is the time to apply the knowledge we had gained of print media reporting on suicide (its limitations and possibilities) to online media. This article tries to bring attention to some of the recommendations for media reporting on suicide and the need for researches based on the online media platform.
Background: Facebook represents a new dimension for global information sharing. Suicidal behaviours and attempts are growingly reported on Facebook. This scoping review explores the various aspects of suicidal behaviours associated with Facebook, discussing the challenges and preventive measures. Methods: PubMed, Google Scholar, and Scopus were searched for related articles published in English up to October 2021, using different combinations of "Facebook" and "suicide". A group of consultant psychiatrists screened the records and read the full-text articles to extract relevant data. Results: Facebook impacts suicidal behaviours in different aspects. Announcing suicides through sharing notes or personal information, which can be helpful in prediction of suicide, and harmful since negatively affects audience. Live-streaming videos of suicide is another aspect, which questions the ability of Facebook to monitor shared contents that can negatively affect the audienc...